


the ending is the same every damn time

by Eya_Silvers



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Action, Adventure, Angst, Eventual Smut, F/M, Horror, Post-RE6, Someone will die
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2019-07-11 13:28:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15973268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eya_Silvers/pseuds/Eya_Silvers
Summary: "He falls at her feet, moving briskly her hands from the fabric of her mid-length jacket. Her thighs are naked under the red, red of the blood and red of the dragon etched onto the couture fabric. It’s a glorious outfit to die in.And she’s as beautiful as the day she died."(or Ada forces Leon onto a quest that can only end by death, as it always does, as key words are betrayal, and love, and hate.)





	1. Prologue - The Black Cat

**Author's Note:**

> This has been on my Google Docs for over... a year, if not more. I have the whole story planned out already and maybe half written down. I'm just waiting to see if it's worth a read.
> 
> PS: I'm not English and neither is my beta but we die like women.

The black cat lies in the only pool of light of the gloomy alley. For now, she offers her belly to the sun, rolling on the warm concrete, but she stills when she sees Leon. Ear twitching, nostril flaring tentatively, she tilts her head to the side before eventually deciding there’s no threat at all. She rises to her paws, stretches, then purrs her way to his boot and rubs her nose on the canon of his sniper rifle.

He observes her for a couple of seconds. With a gentle push, he gets her off him, calmly, non-violently. He positions himself to the other end of the alley, where the light is shut off and black cats dislike to lay.

“Hunnigan.” he calls, and he watches from the corner of his eye the cat languidly trail back to her spot of sun.

“Copy.”

“I’m in position. How long until the convoy is here?”

“You should have approximately four minutes left. Harper is already positioned on the roofs, ready for any eventuality. But Leon, remember, this is only a protection detail and we are not in an active warzone at the moment.”

“You can never know in America.” he grunts back.

“Agent Kennedy, don't be-”

“-a smartass. Roger and out.”

The cat didn't stay for long after all. When he looks back, he has the time to spot the end of her tail swing behind a dumpster; and she's gone.

So he waits in the dark. It's not like he isn't used to stretching strings of time wasted with no other purpose than keeping safe the president himself. He runs all the possible scenarios over and over in his head, the different ways the convoy could get deported by an attack, or blown up, and he sees all the openings a sniper could have for an easy access to the president’s forehead. Helena’s up there, he recalls, eye stuck to the lens of her rifle, just as his finger presses against the safety of his. On the corner of Benford Street, the rest of the DSO should be mimicking his actions, operating in the dark for the day ceremonies to work through without a hitch.

“ _...although I longed to destroy it with a blow, I was yet withheld from so doing, partly by a memory of my former crime, but chiefly -- let me confess it at once -- by absolute dread of the beast. _ ”

The cat snarls. Leon aims for the head. His stomach is already lurching before he’s even realized who that is.

Because of course it’s her.

Who else could it be?

He quickly turns off his earpiece. She takes a couple of steps forward, heels sliding over the asphalt. Her face catches the ray of sun, highlighting the purring animal on her shoulder and this shade of dark red on her lips.

His entire body locks when she approaches slowly, disregarding the menacing barrel pointed at her with a jolt of the brow.

“ _ The Black Cat _ .” she hums. “You should know your classics.”

“I’m not into depressing stories.”

“Get over yourself. It’s romanticism.”

She lights him on fire in the worst ways possible, because it hurts to remember all the times she walks away when she inches to him. The cat slips from her grasp and snarls at Leon’s feet.

A manicured finger brushes against the barrel, toying with it with no intent of pushing it away. Leon is smart enough to recognize a phallic symbol when he sees it. Now’s the time to ask if he is strong enough to avoid being manipulated by it.

“Got some plans for the evening?” she does, voice coated with honey.

He slightly diverts his gun from her chest with a suspicious squint.

“You mean outside from keeping the head of this country away from the clutches of whoever you’re affiliated with now?”

As usual, she doesn’t lose countenance. Maybe this ethereal smirk of hers falters down just an inch. Maybe her hand falls back against her hip, her happiness thawed and thwarted by his coldness. In a world of maybes, they wouldn’t be where they are at the moment.

“The role of the attacker doesn’t suit you - you were always a bottom.” she flashes back before he can even realize that he broke her shell.

“Say what?”

“Listen,” she snaps, and he blinks before her sudden emotionalism. She’s ruptured eye contact with him ever so slightly, and there’s that very small crease between her brows that indicates her worry. Any other man could not read through the lines. Even now, Leon finds it difficult to. “Be careful.”

He snorts. “That’s it?”

The eyeroll she shoots him sends him high. “ _ No _ .” She takes in a breath. “Be careful and don’t die.”

“What, that’s your warning? You’re usually more colorful.”

“I don’t have that kinda time - barely can say hello to you today. But even though you’re capable, you do have extents. And I won’t be here every time you need someone to rescue you from getting your throat cut.”

He hears the trigger being pressed before he sees the flash of metal and she’s flying above his head a mere second later. There’s another glimpse of red, a brisk glance in his direction - then she disappears from his sight, leaving a turmoil of questions swimming around in his mind. Unfortunately, she is the only one who can water down this ignition. It’s odd, but it is, how she can flare him up while owning the key to his peace of mind.

But if Ada is here, it does mean trouble. He secures his grip on the rifle and calls in Hunnigan for the tripling of the guard.


	2. Not Again

_“Leon Scott Kennedy. It’s a pleasure to see you. Please, take a seat.”_

He closes the door behind him, greeting his colleagues in the waiting room as he goes. Hunnigan and her clipboard approach. She asks him how it went. He gives her a dismissive response while advising her not to worry. He’s tough. Doesn’t she know?

_“As you know, it’s merely a routine assessment. We can’t allow our best agents to go out in the field with no prior supervision.”_

_“I get that, doc. I also get that it’s no coincidence that you’re assessing me right after the presidential inauguration, am I wrong?”_

_“Let me check your IQ level off the list.”_

He still can’t get used to the heads of this country addressing him as though he is their superior. Admittedly, if one person could get out of this building alive amongst all, it would be him. He sees no reason to deny that logic. Still, the new face of National Security stops to shake his hand and the Commandant of the Marine Corps takes off his beret in a salute, and now more than ever, he reflects on the boy he left behind and the man he grew to become.

_“Let’s talk about that inauguration you mentioned. How did it go?”_

_"No hiccups.”_

The men’s locker is wide open. He waves at Simon Tew and Jerome Andricks before opening his, briefly rummaging through his stuff to find his personal phone and quickly check up on his mails. Claire is asking for a cup of tea. She’s offering him the chance to meet Burton’s daughter and get back in touch with Sherry. Seems like the girl’s never ceased to be there for the motherless.

_"I was assigned on ground duty and Agent Harper was at the snipe. We were basically guarding the president in case the main guard was downed. It all went smoothly. Seemed like no one else wanted to see another dead president.”_

_“How was your relationship with late Pres. Benford? Would you be able to call it friendly?”_

_"I’m afraid it’s something that needs to stay between Adam and I. No offense, doc.”_

_"I understand. But did his death affect you in any way?”_

_“He was my president. I was his bodyguard. Yeah. It affected me.”_

The bag is packed in a minute. He doesn’t bring much at work. He leaves his guns where they belong, choosing to never carry one as civilian. The knife under his overshirt is enough protection.

His only fear at this point is paranoia. He’d hate himself over giving in to terrorism. He thinks he’s been cornered and terrified enough for another lifetime. The knife at his chest reminds him of his own vulnerability.

_“According to Agent Harper’s report, you had to shoot president Benford in the head after he tried to kill her. You’re also famous for being one of the handful of survivors to escape the tragical incident of Raccoon City.”_

_“And your question is?”_

_"How can you persuade us that after having seen so much horror, you have managed to walk away from them with no scars?”_

Washington DC has always been busy, even more so since he’s settled there. The attacks of the past decades have profoundly scarred the United States. Leon is no blind man. He can recognize a fallen country when he sees it. It shows on the passing faces and the advertisement billboards everywhere he turns his head as he walks back home, a reminder of the aftermath of Tall Oaks. On the right: Because ‘Terr’ doesn’t have to end with ‘rist’. At a bus station: Enlist NOW in your nearest BSAA center. All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

_“Oh, there are scars. But it would be unprofessional to loop our pasts around in our head, wouldn’t it.”_

_"I’d like to go back to our first topic, the presidential inauguration. Sources tell me you’ve lost contact with F.O.S Agent Hunnigan during a good minute when you had clear instructions not to. What happened?”_

He throws his bag on the couch and pulls out the knife from under his jacket. There’re small blood drops at his feet. The trail leads to the bathroom. Its door handle is totally stained. On the wood, a red handprint.

_“Shit, I must have made a mistake with the cable. I find it uncomfortable and I must have tweaked it a little too much to release the pressure.”_

He opens the door with his left hand, the right holding tight the combat knife.

More blood soaking the bath mat. Wet rags drip from the sink filled with reddish water. It’s a butchery, and all he can see is red, everywhere he sets his eye on, slipping, red, a metallic scent heavy in the air. Clenching her stomach on the toilet seat, Ada looks up to him with a faint smile.

“Hey, handsome.”

_“I don’t want this assessment to need help from a lie detector, Agent Kennedy.”_

_"And I don’t wanna keep my ass on this chair for a supposed psychology test but we can’t all get what we want, doc.”_

He falls at her feet, moving briskly her hands from the fabric of her mid-length jacket. Her thighs are naked under the red, red of the blood and red of the dragon etched onto the couture fabric. It’s a glorious outfit to die in.

And she’s as beautiful as the day she died.

“What...”

“Bullet. Side..”

“Yeah, no shit - but how…”

“That’s a conversation for later.”

Her head falls in his hand. He catches her by the shoulders, taking her against his torso with a gasp when she becomes limp. No. Not her. Not now, not here. Not ever.

“Ada?” He shakes her. She doesn’t stir. “Ada?”

He can’t remember a time where he was more terrified.

Leon keeps cupping her cheeks between his hands, staring at those lips slightly open and that scary paleness of her complexion that brings out the ebony of her short hair. There’s a unique statue aspect to her that begs for freedom and adoration, colors unfading with eternity passing by. But instead, in that moment, she’s a chinese doll with broken porcelain as skin and open stitches running up and down her form.

His fingers are shaking when he tears his eyes away from her face, down to her side, where there’s an horrifying hole stealing her eternity away. Quickly, he empties his mind from the woman he loves and rips her jacket apart to reveal the whole wound. His biggest concern at the moment is the blood still running out of it, in spite of the yarn messily prying it closed.

He feels her back for an exit wound. Finds one.

And gets to work.

 

 

There is something oddly nostalgic about being threatened with a knife and being unable to defend himself. He can’t say he’s missed it, but there’s also that little twinge of pride that bubbles up a smile on his lips: she’s learnt the lesson well.

“Following a man’s lead isn’t really my style.” she says, and she’s got her hand pressed against her side, back curved in pain, but sure, she’s ready to head off into the wild of Washington DC’s streets and die in a gloomy alley.

“You’re in no shape to stand.” he growls back, refusing to put his hands up when she asks. Between the two of them, he’d rather the healthy one be in charge.

Leon dares turning around.

Ada’s pale; paler than even before, and sweat stains her forehead like drops of disease. Still, she stands, hand sizing his knife talon leading and edge cutting into his chest after he's just saved her from bleeding out. He can't help but feel like he's the one who always ends up hurt in this story.

“We can’t all be perfect.” she grunts, losing her balance for a second before she’s back on her feet, eyes focused and breath short. “But thanks for the stitches, Leon. They’ll hold. Now move outta my way.”

He snorts. The knife digs a little more. It’s not enough to draw blood. So, he inches forwards, and says:

“No.”

The reply is precise. He could not have been clearer.

“Don’t make me stab you.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You won’t.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

“Then why did you knock on my door?”

Her lips quiver while her voice rises strong. “I had a moment of weakness.” she replies, “It won’t happen again.”

“Kinda like the one you’re having now?”

She glares at him and scoffs. Still, she’s too slow when he twists her wrist, not even hard enough for it to hurt. The blade rings when it hits the floor. Leon shoves it away with a push of the shoe.

Ada staggers. Leon reflexively tenses to catch her in case she decides to black out again. Thanks to some sort of miracle, she finds the strength to stay alert and take hold of a shelf. He clearly notices her deliberate excuses to avoid any contact with him. It’s almost as if she turns her head away when their eyes meet.

She takes a few hesitant steps back until her side hits the bedroom door. She hisses painfully, turns the knob and forces a way in his room to rummage decidedly through his boxer briefs’ drawers. He has no other option but to stare questioningly.

“May I borrow those?” she asks, already slipping the Matilda at her ass. “Oh, and I’m gonna need something to wear too. Can’t go out like this, can I? Thanks for the stripping.”

She’s always done the best impersonations of healthy young vixens. However, Leon’s having a hard time to believe her act this time. Maybe it’s due to the fact that she’s in her undergarments and that the gauze he has used to treat the wound is already soaked with red.

“Ada-”

“Listen” she cuts him as she turns to him, putting on one of his long coats over her sagging shoulders, “this is above you in levels you can't even comprehend. I'm talking top of the ladder here.”

“Maybe if you’d just help me understand, I'd finally get to the bottom of this.”

She shakes her head, breath ragged. “No. I can't have you in this.”

“Ada.” He takes a step forward and her hand shakes around the gun. “I’ll disarm you just as easily as I just did with that knife. So for one, stop stealing my shit. And for two,” he adds quickly just as she opens that witty mouth of hers to interrupt him as always, “just tell me that wherever you’re going is safe, and I’ll leave you alone.”

She stumbles her way around him.

“Sure.” she whispers briskly, a hint of irony in her voice.

“I can protect you until you recover. No one would suspect you here, not even the State if that’s who’s looking for you!”

She smiles in the door frame, and he’d rather have her leave him a thousand times than have her smile this sadly.

“Oh, Leon. You may have gained in maturity but you're still this rookie cop of Raccoon City.”

She looks down to her stomach. He follows her gaze.

Here, Leon’s blue trenchcoat is tainted dark red.

“Looks like I’m gonna have to clear my schedule.” she says dismissively.

Suddenly Ada’s tumbling against the door, struggling to stand upright and her hand on the wood leaves a bloody mark that trails down to the floor when her legs are cut under the knee. He drops next to her as she moans her pain out, so far from the grace she embodies. He wraps his arms around her small figure, and pulls to carry her, bridal style, softly blowing at that wild strand of hair that keeps cutting her eyebrow in two. He snatches from her grip the gun she’s somehow held on to.

“I’m not letting you die here.” he says, and he drags her out of the apartment with no further predicament.

“Not the hospital-” she spurts out, hand pressing her stomach. “They’ll track me down-”

“I know the way it works.” He swiftly gets her down to help her straighten his coat in the elevator. She tightens the belt until it gets unbearable, teeth gritted. “Act natural.” he says as the doors open, and he slides an arm around her waist, plastifying a tense smile on his lips.

The agony retreats behind the mask as Ada grins gracefully for Leon’s landlady.

“Ooh” the woman trills, eyes widening, “I’ve never seen this one before. You never tell me anything, mister Kennedy!”

“Can't imagine why.” Leon’s never been more of an hypocrite.

“Pleased to meet you.” Ada coos. Leon can verify that her charm also works on women. “ _This one_?” she echoes with a smirk as they hop in the street.

He humphs. “You're not the only woman in my life.”

“Probably, but I'm the most important one.” she retorts. He opens the car door for her, neglecting an answer.

He sits behind the wheel. “So, you gonna cooperate or what?”

“Do I have much of a choice?”

He clenches his jaw. Starts the engine.

“I hate to force you.”

He drives until he's out of town, watching by the corner of his eye her grimace. Not a single sound escapes her mouth, but her face says it all.

“Think you can handle the journey?” he asks worryingly.

She scoffs. “I'm a big girl.”

“I never doubted that, you know. But it can't hurt to admit you need help.”

“Where I come from, needing help is synonym to being dead.”

“Well you're with me now, and you're not dying today. We're gonna pull through this.”

Leon has no idea what this sentence triggers inside her, but her face becomes a mask of turmoil and raging waters.

She lets out a cry as he drives into a hole by accident. He steps harder on the gas.

“You should've left me behind.” he hears Ada murmur. He feels like screaming.

“You were bleeding out on my toilet bowl, what in the fuck was I supposed to do-?”

“...another... mistake of mine-”

Faster, he thinks. _Faster_.

He's sure he'll have to pay for at least a dozen of fines for speeding if he ever gets home after betraying the DSO and the entire government of the States, but _fuck it_ ; Ada’s head is lolling forward and her left hand, previously squeezing the armrest until the knuckles were white, is dangling on it, swinging with the jolts and turns.

He spares her another desperate look. Her eyes aren't closed, but they're merely seeing anything.

“You're not dying on me.” he lets out angrily, his hands shaking on the wheel. “Not fucking _again_.”


	3. First Kill

Leon isn’t a spy, but he’s seen one work for, though mostly against, him. He knows how they operate, face in the shadow and back facing morality to apply cold logic into every insensitive act. He thinks they’re ruthless animals. He thinks of them as sociopaths. All of it he’s learnt through watching Ada, from following in her footsteps in Raccoon to that goodbye text message in Liangsheng. She’s always been one step ahead. After all, you can’t kill with your heart.

He doesn’t have the stomach for it. Pointing his gun up at an innocent person’s forehead is already beyond his will; or so he thought. He guesses he didn’t know how far he could go to save Ada’s life.

"Stay here.”

He’s carried her out of the car and sat her there, between that AED and this stretcher. She hadn’t shown sign of life since they got to the hospital - except for her chest rising and falling with difficulty, her face maintains the cold passivity that made her famous in her lifetime. The point is, she isn’t going anywhere. No kisses left on a leather glove to a wretched cheek, no flying curtains by a sunrise wind. Not this time.

Leon takes his gun back and hides it at his belt.

It’s at this moment that he remembers that he’s never arrested anyone. You can’t apprehend the dead when they don’t abide by the laws that a rookie cop at the first day on his job was so desperately trying to follow. The gun in his palm digs up the memory of his first dead body. It had been crawling to him, a plaint at its lips acrid with yellow foam, and Leon had begged for it to freeze. Every undead was a bullet to the heart to put down their grave, definitely. Every kill cost a part of him, more than he’d care to admit, more than it’s possible to fix. He’s learned the lesson in Raccoon City - aim for the head. Act with your brain.

He’s never acted more with his heart.

It’s almost too easy to find Dr. Isaacs. The man’s in the morgue, fiddling with the samples of whatever the hell morgues have in store, when Leon kicks the door in with no other form of ceremony.

“Mr. Kennedy, you have no proof th-”

The barrel is perfectly aligned between the brows. The safety is off in a click. Terror passes through Isaac’s eyes. In his life, Leon’s never set off fear in people’s hearts.

“Follow me.” he says, simply, alarmingly. “Keep your mouth shut and I’ll wait a few more days until I send the entire DSO after your ass.”

“Whatever it is, I’m sure that-”

Leon slams the gun down Isaac’s nose, hard. He’s sure he’ll come to regret this later, but right now his blood is boiling while Ada’s running low.

He’s stained the doctor’s blouse. He tells himself that it’s okay, the man already has blood on his hands.

Fifteen years ago, Leon had sworn on oath: Umbrella Corporations, the very first creators of that plague virus, must fall. It did, and it had been beautiful, a cleansing nuclear explosion of the town and the underground laboratories it kept secret. Very few physically survived the evil’s death. The ones that did had withered away, choosing to walk amongst the living as though they hadn’t participated in the creation of death itself. Umbrella is part of them, whether they’ve shut it off or not.

Leon’s always had his suspicions on Olivier Isaacs.

He leads him to Ada, the cold of the steel pressed against the doctor’s head. The man’s a wuss, a rat that’s feeding off the corpse of his past to make a living today, and he can’t even stand the sight of a barrel. He shakes all his life when Leon orders him to save her.

“Save her.” he says. The woman had slipped, huddled up on herself against the cold floor. “For the love of God…”

Isaacs turns around to him, distress written all over his face. He stammers.

“I… I work at the morgue-”

“You dissected living humans to turn them into freaks not so long ago.” Leon spits. “You’ve had to stitch together a coupla mistakes, right? I know you gotta have spare blood in your secret drawer, doc.” he cuts him as he was about to open his mouth. “Or just give her mine, I don’t give a shit. Just save her.”

Isaacs’ lip trembles. He looks down the gun now pointed at his throat, then back to the lifeless form of the woman.

“What type is she?” he blurts out suddenly, and then he’s knelt next to her. Leon helps him lift her up to the stretcher. He could die from the relief. Even with that gun in hand, Isaacs is the one in charge, since Leon can’t for the love of it kill the only one who has the ability to heal Ada.

“I don’t know.” he answers honestly.

“I’ll make do.”

“You better.”

  
  


Adrenalin is the only thing that keeps him awake at this point.

He’d have crumbled if it wasn’t for it - both from exhaustion and relief at the knowledge that she’s finally stable, unawake but stable. He wants to be there when she opens her eyes. He needs to know why.

Why is she on this operating table? Who put her there, who put the bullet through her - did a new job of hers turn wrong? Did an old one come to surface, leaving her to fight with demons? A bullet is a man’s weapon. Ada herself always preferred arrows.

There are men willing to kill for her. He’s sure that she’s proud to add him to her list. But there are others, lovers, reciprocated or not much like Simmons, who are willing to kill her out of both love and hate. The two are closely intertwined, he thinks, trying to accord to Ada’s mind. Maybe that’s why she always seems to mix the coldness of a kiss and the caress of a gun.

Isaacs is fiddling with the blood pouch dripping down tubes and into Ada’s wrists. Leon’s brow furrows as he watches him move onto the drugs. He’s no doctor, but he can easily treat betrayal with a hole in the head. Unlike the Asian spy, he isn’t too fond of neither poetry nor romanticism - still, he thinks of death as easy mercy for a man of Isaacs’ kind.

She stirs.

He jumps to his feet, quickly gesturing Isaacs to stay put.

“Ada?”

He cups her cheeks, devouring the sight of her eyes fleeting open. Her hand looks for him, finds his shirt and pulls on it as she looks around for her surroundings with groggy eyes.

“The hospital.” he sums up quietly, unable to stop a smile from reflecting through his professional stern. She always could read him anyways.

Ada closes her eyes, a tear from the shock slipping to her ear. He collects it respectfully.

“No” she drags in a groan, batting eyelids before the blinding lights. He sees her muscles tense painfully - she tries to sit up, but he rests a palm on her shoulder, forcing her down. She’s already shaking with the effort to stay awake and he won’t have her tire herself out when the pile of shit is going up to their waist. “Let me go, Leon-“

“No one else but Doctor Isaacs knows you’re here.” he says, tilting his head to the man who stays so very still at Ada’s feet. “You clearly underestimate me, Ada.” He adds in a chuckle: “Another mistake of yours?”

“Wrong” she replies faintly. Her head falls back onto the table but the corner of her eye is still set on the white blouse. “Boost me.”

Previously terrified to even gaze at her direction, Isaacs stops before looking up. “Sorry?”

“...whatever drug you got-“ she mumbles, eyelids half closed. “Shoot me awake..”

“Ada, you need rest-“ Leon tries to advise.

“I need t… to _leave_.” she retorts, somehow finding the strength to glare at him.

Leon stands his ground, holding his eyes strong against hers while huffing like frustrated. He’s not, really. He just wants to pretend that he won’t stand there while an half-comatose thirty-five ish years old woman who relishes to fuck with him orders him around.

“Doc.” Leon snaps, securing his grip on the gun. Isaacs whimpers at the call. “You heard the lady.”

“Y-yes-”

He stumbles back to his lab. Leon hears the clutter of scalpels hitting the ground in the haste immediately followed by the flutter of a few swears. Turning his head to a corner of the room, he notices a closet of tools that’s misplacement reveals a door. It screams when he pushes it further, startling the doctor who runs in his wake, eyes widening in fear.

“It’s nothing! Please, sir, I can assure you th-”

“Shut it.” Leon replies coldly. He’s already slipped through the opening.

His instincts are never wrong. Well, except when it comes to Ada - but his excuses have excuses, the woman is water between everyone’s fingers.

And indeed it isn’t nothing. He takes a second to step back in front of the memories the room shouts at his face, that copy, pale but a copy of the laboratories he visited in Raccoon City and the island in Spain; glass pillars filled with vials, all a different color, nothing that looks like it can be drank without for sure some twisted body mutation - and body mutations, actually _breathing_ ghosts of what used to be test mouses on the shelf near the desk with the microscope. The things look up at him taking it all in, an horrified gasp leaving his mouth when they start throwing themselves against the plexiglas. Their mouths stacked with far too many teeth are foaming and their white furs are peeled by places, probably where they bit or scratched them off with the rage. There’s a literal open closet of blood pouches near the sink filled with dirty tools and litter - blood pouches and something that resembles a head under a cheese cloche, but the head is entirely grey and hairless, skinless, something like wax or mold leaking onto the side of the glass. The fangs bulge out of its lipless mouth. The name _Regenerador_ is screamed at him. Perhaps a new kind. A whole new level of fucked up.

Leon snatches his eyes from the scene and drags the heat lamps to Ada’s bedside. Isaacs watches him silently, terror threatening his weak body to burst and the syringe to fall off his hand. Leon places the lights at her chest and legs. Although good at his job, he’s never been good at hiding his emotions and true intentions.

“What’s in this?”

He mustn’t have controlled his tone because Isaacs takes a step back. Leon draws his gun back on him.

“What’s in this?” he repeats in a deep growl that would send anyone running the other way.

“S-sugammadex and adrenaline-” he says, breath hitched.

“Hand it over.” Leon does. “Go in a corner and stay there. Move and I send your ass straight to where your old boss is buried.”

Isaacs carries it all out to the letter. Leon finds it amazing that even though he didn’t order it, the doctor decided in the end to face the wall like a punished kid. He thinks back to the mutated mouses in the next room, jerking against the walls of their prisons, and the Regenerador’s head served on a plate.

He arms himself with the syringe and looks for the right vein in her arm; he’s no doctor but he wishes to be as delicate as possible, deducting that the products mixed would only result in a violent shock to her. She has her hand hanging off the table. He takes it, gives it a squeeze. And stabs her.

The effect is instantaneous.

Ada bolts up, air rushing into her lungs and tears pricking at her eyes. She gives out a pained cry at being thrust back into consciousness, clutching her chest as her heart mimics a freight train (Leon feels it in her wrist he holds in a chokehold) and she falls back onto the table just as suddenly, Leon hurrying to shield her head so she doesn’t knock herself right back out.

There’s hot breath tickling his chin, and teared up black eyes that look up to the hope in his blue.

“How’re you feeling?” he asks above her, studying with care the dangerous widening of her pupils.

Ada’s hand goes up to her side to feel the bullet wound stitched into a new scar. “Saint-like.” Leon smiles in response, brushing the sweat from her forehead. “Just give me a second.”

“Will do.” he does. His smile falters as soon as he turns to Isaacs. The doctor had been studying them while they weren’t looking, forgetting for too long his victim act. He looks back down when he sees the blue darken in Leon’s eyes. The agent straightens. Calls out, slowly:

“Doc”. For the first time, he gets to taste the power of arresting a criminal - for the first time, he gets to cuff one of the many who started the end.

Isaacs’ shoulders shake. Leon snorts, unimpressed.

“You’re under arrest, doc, for crimes against America and humanity as a whole. Turn back against the wall and quit whimpering.”

“I’d do anything you want!” the man then starts begging - authentic cries for mercy. They do make Leon raise an eyebrow. He hadn’t been ready for a pride that low. “Anything at all - please… I don’t want to run again…”

“Run? That’s what you’re worried about?” Leon barks, disconcerted but still very much furious.

The man raises red eyes. “Anything. On anyone. The people I work for. The people you work for. I can even tell you about Ada Wong…”

Leon could crack up. The simple fact that Isaacs might think he would gobble up his bullshit just proves how unworthy of sympathy he is.

He is exulting. If only he had actual handcuffs at the moment, and the one woman in his life wasn’t lying on an autopsy table, this second of his life would be perfect. He’ll treasure its memory, just like he likes to recall putting an end to Simmons’ life, the President’s Security Advisor, the President’s Killer, and Ada Wong’s once lover. She attracts dangerous men, doesn’t she? Yet all of them fall before the most dangerous of them all.

The bullet leaves a hole in the middle of Olivier Isaacs’ forehead.

Leon had raised his arms to head-level as soon as he heard the familiar click. He really only sees the doctor’s body hit the floor and the splash of blood spray on the wall behind him. The gunshot continues to ring in his ears long after its departure.

“Cruelty doesn’t suit you.” Ada says. His gun smokes in her hand. He hadn’t even noticed its theft. “Leave the assassinations to me in the future, would you?”

He bores his eyes into hers. Now he’s both pissed and confused. More or less the state he’s been since she double-crossed him for the first time. Minus the heartbreak.

“Care to explain me _what the fuck_?”

Ada jumps off the autopsy table, grinting a little with the effort. She throws his gun to him. He catches it in mid-air, brow furred by all the questions he wishes he could drown her with.

“I did.” she retorts teasingly, scrutinizing her new hospital gown. “You’re too soft for this.”

Leon watches her fumble around and find the scalpels Isaacs knocked over earlier. In response, he gets to the stretcher he used to get her in the morgue and looks for a body bag he sets on the stretcher. She hops inside it almost merrily after having stuck a couple of scalpels in her closed palm, cutting end against her forearm.

“You’re enjoying this a little too much.” he says before fastening the zip up to her chin.

Ada tilts her head to the side. It’s a comical… almost cute view from upside down. He refuses to give in.

“I did just save your innocence.”

Leon huffs loudly with a fake smile. He zips her up completely.

The gunshot has to have echoed throughout the building. It’s a sound America’s used to by now, and a procedure the staff must know by heart with all the test practices and real-life situations. He makes his way to the emergency exit where he came from. His car is still messily parked on the lawn. The tyres had left burnt grass in their wake.

He does his best to seem at least slightly worried at the doctors’ stressed whispers when he passes by them - he had never bothered to take up drama class in his teens. Fate had made him a choir boy.

He turns to his car, and he turns to the multiple hearses on their own parking lot before speeding to one and realizing he doesn’t have the keys. Smashing the window is to avoid with all the eyewitnesses already on edge. They would only call the cops on him, cops that should already be on their way. He doesn’t need the people he works for at his ass today.

“‘scuse me” he does, adopting an attitude he hopes is relaxed - well, as relaxed as you can be during a terrorist attack he helped provoke. “I don’t think leaving this body out in the sun’s really sanitary.”

The white blouse he spoke to turns around and eyes Leon’s stretcher critically.

“What is it even doing outside in the first place?”

“Well I sure can’t take it back inside, can I?”

The logic is admirable. The doctor has to bow.

“They’re usually in the sun visor.” he dismisses, then frowns. “Wait, are you new in this department?”

“Kinda.” Leon does with hurry, keys already in hand. He slides the stretcher inside and jumps behind the wheel, making the engine wheeze. “Thank you, sir.” he says, window open and salute low.

He’s certain that this undying politeness will come to him as a flaw one day. For now, he prays for the doctor to omit the description of his face when’ll come the murder investigation.

“Alright, we’re far enough.” He raises his voice. “You can come out now!”

Hers is voluptuous when it comes from behind him, black nails planted at each side of the seat’s shoulders.

“I’ve been out for a time.”

It makes him jump a little, almost enough to lose control of the wheel. He’s used to being startled by her. He just never expects the time she does.

She slips shotgun in a sway. Head flowing in the wind, she throws a look out to the city passing by and the sun going down behind the skyscrapers.  She doesn’t ask where they’re going or if Leon has any idea of their destination. They’re out in the open, in the States, in the capital, and he’s currently missionless. It’d be the easiest thing to just pull up and pull her up at the nearest police station - it’s not what’s to miss around here.

But Ada has nothing to be afraid of. No one has ever double crossed her before. Or at least, no one has double crossed her before they realized that she had been the one to betray first.

“You got a plan?” he asks, cutting the silence to a short.

It’s only then that she speaks. Woman has her ways.

“Pull over here.”

He shoots her a dubious eye. “So you can run?”

“I owe you.” she retorts. “I just need to change.”

“By all means…” and he pushes on the brakes, finding a precarious parking spot to stop into. She hops out breezily. Still, it takes an expert to notice the slight crisp of her muscles that indicate her ache. “Going shoplifting?” he asks humorously, hiding this obsessive need to always know that she’ll be okay.

Ada raises an amused eyebrow. “Perhaps.” She closes the door in her wake, turns one more time for him. “If you hear sirens, don’t wait around for me.”

“I know it’s said lightly but no, thanks.”

She gives a slow smile.

“See you, Leon.”


	4. Road Work

He throws her the pills, she opens the door and he slides at her side. It’s beyond his will; Leon is instantly drawn like a moth to a light to the black shiny leather of the Lamborghini. He draws out a long whistle.

“That yours?”

In response, Ada tilts a cocky chin up. The engine roars beneath her fingers. Leon, being an impressionable man, opens saucer eyes. Ada smirks wider.

“I went shopping.”

Taken aback by the car, he had failed to notice what he always notices first on her, right after the gun that usually sits in her hands. This time, she isn’t wearing a dress but a flimsy and shoulder-transparent black jacket. Around her waist, a red pencil-skirt unravels down in thick strings that fall on her naked knees. It’s like she never got shot at all.

He watches her face until blinking becomes compulsory. She’s put on jet black lipstick. Really, she loves to live dangerously.

And wealthy.

Even a spy as good as her wouldn’t dare steal someone else’s sportscar - no need to mention that it would mean its owner bringing a task force of police at her pursue. No, this car is hers, and so are those creator’s clothes. They’re as a pleasure to the eyes as they are a pain to the wallet - not to Ada’s wallet, though, as it is filled with money she gained over the people she killed.

He should be over it. In all the time he’s known her, she hadn’t been able to hide for a day who she really was. She’s a spy, and a mercenary - her line of work involves stealing mass murdering weapons and finishing off the people who saw too much.

He wonders for a moment if he has been part of these people. If he is still.

Leon clears his throat. Ada pretends innocence, and pulls away from the parking spot into the street.

“So, what’s next? We go our separate ways ‘til next time?”

The tone is light ; as he’s said many times in the past, he’s no stranger to abandonment. One might even say that he doesn’t mind it anymore. He’s just filling in his part of the deal, saving her from a bullet, once more, and this since he took one look at her in this parking lot fifteen years ago and decided that  _ this one, this time, I will not let go;  _ and thus even after he knew where her morality laid. Leon’s a desperate man.

Ada takes in a breath.

“I was thinking more of an other option.”

Her tone is light too; although maybe... more dismissive. Careless. By the evasion of her eyes, he guesses the situation isn’t. The problems Ada faces are often bigger than the both of them reunited: if she works apart from the law and if he works nose deep inside it, it can only mean an entity from above.

“Ada, I work for the government.” he says softly. “If I leave with you, it’s treason and the green line of a prison in Texas. Hell, it’s a miracle they still don’t know-”

“The people that shot me know about you too.” she cuts off. “They know about all of us, and they want to get it over with.”

“What-”

“Believe me, they’ll track you down even at the Capitol.”

“Ada, what do you mean by  _ all of us _ ?”

The reply takes a long time coming. It seems to hurt her throat when she lets it out.

“They call us the walking dead. They have those... lists of names, some crossed and some encircled, all of them correlated to each other. My name is on a list. Yours just made it in yesterday.”

“Who else?”

She bites her lip, spitting the words out. It seems to be an effort for her to tell the truth for once. “The Raccoon City survivors, and everyone that represents a threat to them and has survived their viruses.”

“Give me names.”

Leon’s voice has never been colder. It reminds her of how much he  _ cares _ , how much of a better man he is than any other.

“A warning: there’s a bunch. The Redfield siblings, for instance. Jill Valentine, the Burton family, the Winters couple, and the little Sherry Birkin.”

The inside of the car is cold. Or maybe it’s the feeling of his heart sinking at the realization that the only kid he’ll ever have is in immediate risk of death.

“Don’t assume the worst, now.” Ada does, turning left. “There are different kinda lists.”

“Care to develop?”

“Sure.” she complies, tapping the wheel in frustration before a small traffic jam. “There are names that are meant to disappear and names that are needed as experimentation.”

“Sherry.” he mutters, teeth gritted.

“And Wesker’s son.”

“No way.” he sarcasms.

“Way.” she sing-songs. “Those two… forever the lab rats.”

Leon shakes his head forcefully. Ada ignores an orange light.

“I won’t let that happen again. She’s seen enough syringes for a lifetime, more than any kid could bear.”

“But she’s not a kid anymore,” Ada says almost teasingly, turning her head to him after a stop at an intersection. “is she?”

“Doesn’t mean she isn’t allowed help. No, if she’s in trouble, I’m coming, end of the story. In fact, I say let’s rejoice with the rest of the ‘walking dead’.”

“Although isn’t that giving them what they want? All of us reunited in a same location, just waiting for a late summer harvest…”

Leon shrugs. “Maybe. But there’s a reason as to why we’re wanted six feet underground, am I right? Come on, Ada. Look at the both of us. A spy I don’t even know the real name of and a secret government agent. And I haven’t even named the rest yet. We’ve been surviving for fifteen years and more now, don’t tell me we can’t hold our own against whatever the new Umbrella throws at us.”

Ada pinches her lips together. It seems that it rips her gut out to even show agreement. Control is a thing she likes to imprison to her only. Rare are the moments she lends it around, and even then it’s consciously and willingly with the knowledge that she’ll be the endgame beneficiary.

Thankfully, she still owns the wheel.

“You still didn’t tell me who’s behind all this.” he inquires. She takes the exit to the highway, direction boroughs of the capital. “A name I can link to the threat, maybe?”

Ada shakes her head, looking straight ahead. “None than I can recall.”

Leon doesn’t believe her bullshit for one second. “I was willing to bet you were gonna say that.”

“Should’ve actually put some coins on the table.”

He freezes on the spot, eyes stuck on the windshield until they slowly turn back to her, eyebrow drawn up. “You’re sassing me?”

“Have been for the past fifteen years - are you really only realizing just now?”

He takes the offense full front, hides it by leaning against the window and watching Ada leave all the other cars behind. 

Ada doesn’t trust him with the information. She’d gritted the last two replies and hadn’t managed to puke out the last one. Most of the time he bets on a guess and in response she smiles when he’s right. But this once, there seems to be a twist in the way they function.

They can be two at this game created by one. Leon’s got her now, and somehow she can’t cut the lace tied around their pinkie. It’s his time to make the most out of a shitty situation.

“We’re going over to Claire’s.” he says. His voice leaves no room for objection.

Right hand pulling at the stick shift, Ada let’s a slow smile reign over her lips. Long gone is her rookie cop. But there’s that small, beautiful part of him she’s glad that she’s managed to save. The part of him that he can’t seem to let go. The part that’s actually her.

“Understood, officer.”

  
  


Claire lives on the opposite eastern side of the continent. Maine seemed far enough from the governmental garbage to her taste.

Sometimes he thinks back to Hunnigan and her clipboard, finger constantly prepping her glasses up the bridge of her nose. To Tew and Andricks betting in the locker room on the next Washington Nationals season, and to the busy routine of his life punctuated by state short missions and late knife combat trainings. To that psychologist and his questions, prying and impertinent,  _ alarming _ \- but come to think of it, a psychologist is supposed to intrude you where it hurts to fully interpret the gravity of the injury in order to treat it in the best ways. Or so, Leon guesses. He’s fucking trained in rescue missions, not chit-chats with PTSDd veterans.

They don't really talk during the journey. Leon asks if she's alright from time to time, and she usually snaps back an answer. He sees her eyeing the trunk of the car when she thinks he isn't looking, during the lunch breaks. He knows how itching she is to run away from him. He'd rather have her admit it out loud than having her plan things behind his back; but it's Ada. And Ada is unreachable.

And he's attracted to the freedom glowing inside her like a flame. The kind of freedom he’s never had, and is desperate to taste like it’s the gods’ nectar.

And he's shoved away by this freedom glowing inside her like a flame because there's no way he can have it. They may stand next to each other for now, stand each other for now, but he’ll never have her because she's not really here.

Lucky are the men who got to have her, he thinks bitterly, unaware that the last thing Ada’s lips touched were his.

Sure, she's fucked other people. She's let her body be consumed by others but her face has become a sanctuary, her lips the altar.

Does that make him the martyr?

  
  
  
  


Ada tiredly wipes the fog on the mirror and observes her naked body, tracing the line of the scar right on her stomach, from the still healing bullet wound. With a sigh, she takes the gauze and wraps it on the injury, concealing it from the world and herself.

Her fingers skim over the older wound, fully healed, badly hidden.

“This is the scar of Ada Wong.” she echoes in a murmur. “She has ceased to exist the very moment Leon Kennedy crashed into her life.”

Then she falls back into the silence. She puts on her night clothes and walks in their shared motel room with her black hair seeping drops on the stained carpet. Wordlessly, she lies on the bed, watching a stain on the dirty yellow ceiling until Leon comes back from the bar.

“Any news?” he says.

“Not one.” she says.

They are both miserable, but frankly, she wouldn't trade this for all the gold in the world. Knowing that Leon’s alive is enough to make her live too.

  
  


A shadow follows them since Washington DC.

He glances over his shoulder, he throws a peak at the rear-view mirror… it’s gone in half a beat, leaving him to wonder if it hadn’t just been his everlasting paranoia.

“I feel it too.” Ada says.

The unasked question in his eyes is received, and answered to.

“I have the same feeling when I’m being watched.” she continues. “The bigger the tingling, the bigger the beast.”

“What is it?” he asks, hoping to get even a fleeting peep at it between the thick foliage that stretches above them.

She shakes her head. “I’m as much in the blur as you are. But I’ve already lost it in DC, might as well do it again at the canadian border.”

Leon frowns. “It’s not human made geography that’s going to stop whatever the shit it is.”

“Perhaps not, but I’ve never seen a house tall B.O.W navigating in a sea of forest, have you? I’m eager to be the first to witness that exploit.”

With no predicament her foot rams against the accelerator and Leon takes a hold of the armrest, compressed against his seat like a crepe. Beautiful, expensive  _ and  _ fast car. He’s not one to feel attached to physical objects, but he swears he’ll dementle the B.O.W’s head if it so much as scratches its gleaming paint.

“Mind if we make a detour?” Ada asks.

“What kind of detour?” he snaps back, but she was already diverting from the road.

The wheels pummel fistfuls of dirt and twigs against the windshield as she brakes into a crosscut. It’s dark despite the clear weather, plunged in shadows by the crown of the trees. Leon can’t remember a time where he took a halt in the woods to listen to the birds calling or the wind shuffling amongst the leaves - or was it the wild boars, the brown bears fraying themselves a path in the nature their home?

Leon only has himself to blame for forgetting the purity of the wildlife and spending too much of his energy on human-made horrors. He needs a vacation. A damn long one.

“I held a promise to an old friend, some time ago.” she says matter-of-factly, like it’s unimportant chit-chat. “And now that I’m finally in the area, I can put an end to it.”

His brow furrows at her words. He feels some sort of subtext in her voice.

“Put an end?” he echoes doubtfully. “Is that another way to say that you’ll kill the guy?”

“Don’t assume too fast.”

Leon pulls a face. “You’d rather me be totally oblivious?”

“Yes.” she answers truthfully. “You’d be much more fun to toy with.”

He can’t help but chuckle. For once, she means no harm. It isn’t even flirtatious, just conversational - if you forget about the part where she mentioned making a detour to assassinate a man, that is.

“Who’s the lucky fellah?” Leon does. He pretends nonchalance by gazing out the window, trying again to see a monstrous wing under the  rare clouds.

“A man I knew in my youth.” Ada sees his eye twitch, and adds with amusement: “Yes, I wasn’t always this gymnastic champion you see before you. There was a time before Ada Wong.”

“I would’ve liked to see that.”

“It was not eye candy, really.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” he shrugs. “I’ve never known the woman inside the spy. And you’ve known me before I became an agent. I wouldn’t mind breaking that power imbalance.”

Ada remains silent for a few of seconds.

“I  _ am _ older than you, that’s true.”

“Don’t pull the age card on me, Ada. I am a slow learner, fine. But I learn.”

“To my eyes’ greatest pleasure.”

He fakes offense. “I’m still lean.”

“You gained brawns.”

“And you haven’t changed.”

She tsks. “I’m growing my hair.”

“Starting from now?”

“You were an officer, Leon, not a detective, so don’t get cocky…!”

He chuckles, she smiles, and it’s a sunshine on her lips like gold that stretches to her eyes, a scar that breaks her face in two. By light of day he can see the circles under her eyes that remind him of that gunwound, and remind her that she isn’t as flawless as she pretends to be. But to Leon, those tears in her character only perfect the idea he has of her, as a compassionate, defiant, untamable wanderess with white strings in her hair.

And then that smile is gone. Her eyes harden against the silhouette of a house that brutally cuts the dirt road to a stop, and Leon’s breath hitches.

They’ve reached their destination.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> inspiration for Ada’s outfit: https://celebmafia.com/jenna-louise-coleman-photoshoot-for-the-harrods-journal-september-2015-405677/


	5. Scenario A

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, work's incredibly intense. As a thanks for sticking with this story, here are two chapters in a row :) know that I read your comments and even though I might not respond instantly, I really cherish them!  
> There might be many mistakes. I haven't yet gotten my beta to read it, we both have a very full life. Feel free to correct me in the comments!
> 
> Trigger warnings: death, suicide, panic attacks, and weird spooks.

“Charming.”

The light descends from the very top of the mansion, the weather vane, the mossy tiles of the roof and the watered gutter, blinding down on the windshield. Leon feels small, all of a sudden. He leans forward, squinting, to the empty windows of the first, and second, and third floors. The inside is masked by either shutters or thick curtains.

“Does that friend even live here anymore?” he says, turning around to the driver’s seat only to see that Ada beat him to it.

He takes a few extra seconds to express his exasperation and follows her out of the car. Ada’s at the back of it. She opens the trunk in a swift pull after throwing him a glance.

“You can stay here.” she suggests, pulling out diverse weapons.

He recognizes the famous crossbow and a complete kit of chinese ring daggers. It had been naive of him to think that she wouldn’t come prepared, naive to think that she wouldn’t deviate from their main objective and throw him in another tantrum of mixed feelings (disappointment and confusion are always the most discernible out of them all). He comes to her side, locks his jaw and grabs a gear he now calls his.

“Right.”

He doesn’t have her in his eyesight, but he can feel her tense, probably discontent, probably building her eye muscles to roll - and Leon doesn’t even try to hide his own satisfaction when she closes back the trunk a little too violently. She doesn’t want him to spy on her, clearly. She should’ve thought about his stubborn head before bringing him here.

Leon slides the small Blacktail at his belt and some spare ammo in his back pockets. The car beeps when Ada presses the remote, already on her way to the front gate. Trailing her footprints to it, he observes the guarding camera and the intercom.

“Wanna give it a try?” he proposes, but she’s got other ideas.

The trigger goes off and the intercom crackles somberly as it dies, impaled by an arrow. Ada wraps her fist around it, pulls it out in a huff, effectively snapping it open with colored wires leaking out of it.

At this point, Leon doesn’t know where to put himself.

“Should we… go around the back door if we’re gonna break in?”

After betraying his own principles and his home country, participating in the murder in cold blood of a doctor, running away with a most wanted, Leon doesn’t think that trespassing on private property makes much of a difference. He just doesn’t want unnecessary problems, like a break-in detector that’ll send the feds their way, or the barrel of the shotgun of whoever owned this mansion pointed at his navel. He’d rather keep on sucking air while he still has the possibility to get answers.

“I’m expected.” Ada replies simply, tongue darting out of her lips as she twists the wires, in extreme concentration. “I hope.”

“You hope?” Leon echoes doubtfully.

He’s getting nervous. The chamber of his gun has already been checked two times and once more can’t hurt - he examines the camera above his head again, and it’s looking down on them, the red light that’s indicating its autonomy, dead.

In conclusion, someone is trying its very best to try and make it look like this house is abandoned: in conclusion, someone is scared.

Looking over at Ada, Leon can’t imagine who it is that someone could be scared of.

“Done!” she sings suddenly, and the gate slowly swings open in a low creak. She’s got one of those smiles he’s learnt to watch out for when she turns back to him. “My invitation still stands, Leon.”

Another scoff from his part. “I’m not doing the dog, scratching at the window for its master to come back from the shop.”

Ada pouts. Her hips sway when she moves forward to the main entrance. “I hadn’t thought about it like that. Maybe I should have put up a cardbox sign in the car.  _ Cave canum _ .  _ Don’t worry, the dog is fine; I left the a/c on.” _

He follows her taunt. “Gee, thanks.”

They reach the porch without a hitch. No land mines, no strident alarm, no guard dog, nothing. Leon’s fingers hover over his firearm, practically begging for shit to go down to give him the excuse to use it. Any identified creature would be better than the tension of the unknown. Hell, even that B.O.W that follows them - at least he has somewhat of an idea of what it is.

Ada raises an index and pushes it against the doorbell. Once. No response. Twice, harder, longer, an eyebrow cocked and lips forward in a beginning of annoyance. She lets her hand slap at her thigh when it falls.

“Looks like your friend isn’t home.” Leon says.

“He  _ is _ .” she snaps, taking a few steps back to the porch and looking up the first floor. “We just have to find another way in.”

Leon breathes out loudly. “I am  _ not _ liking the looks of this.”

Ada shifts to the exterior wall, to the decayed bricks and the growing vine that hides most of its length. There, she lifts her feet off the ground and starts climbing up. “I told you you could wait in the car.”

Leon squints away from her ass. “Are you really -“

“Don’t have my hook.” she replies, now two meters above him. “Come on!”

“Yeah…” he mutters, before grabbing the edge of a brick and awkwardly pushing his weight up. Leon’s had the basics of a military-like training, which fortunately involved climbing up walls of wood… and that was now twelve years ago. He hasn’t had the occasion to climb anything above two meters since then, and his instantly bruised fingertips remind him of that.

He must have breathed a little too heavily, or climbed too slowly, one of the two, or the two at once, because Ada’s now looking down at him from the first floor balcony with worry knitting her eyebrows together. He doesn’t need her worry. He can handle this.

“You doing okay down there, handsome?”

“Fine -”

He grips a bar of the balcony’s railing, hauling himself through sheer hard work from his wrists until he reaches the handrail and swings a leg above it, landing besides Ada who clearly, deeply enjoyed the show.

“Can we get in now?” he huffs as she still hasn’t left his side, a first on her part.

She shakes her head. “It’s double glazing. I’m not breaking my elbow against that. We have to go higher.”

“Ada…”

“Shh.”

Leon glances down, already very much disliking that awful idea he had to accompany her to whatever new death sentence she had found her way to. He swallows. He distinctly remembers the tears in his palms as he gripped onto the cables of the destroyed elevator for dear life, Helena above him, a degenerated Simmons under him, and his claws ripping at his boots, making him lose his grip - he saw himself falling off that skyscraper so clearly that his screams sometimes awakened his nights. No, Leon isn’t fond of heights. The view above him offers a slight comfort.

He seizes a new brick, eyes stuck on where Ada sets her heels on (how she manages to walk, and now  _ climb _ a flat surface with shoes like that, goes above his head) because he supposes she knows the way, knows where the strongest bearings are, the eroded parts of the wall to avoid; he feels flush rise up to his neck with the effort, fingertips white and bloodied at the same time. He’s breathing too hard, that’s the cause of the sudden dizziness, certainly not the abrupt drop thirty feet down below. No, certainly not the abrupt drop thirty feet down below.

Ada is talking to him. He nods his head to indicate that he understands, it’s all fine, he’s got this, he’s gone through worse. He used to dive through windows for a little show-off, for fuck’s sake. Unnecessary bitching isn’t his style.

“Come on.” he hears, and he feels a tug at his arm, a powerful grip pulling him up the pitch of the dormer. He holds on tightly to the tiles under his palms, working to get his legs up on the roof with the rest of his body. Ada only releases him once she’s sure he won’t miserably fall down.

Shaking off the quaver of his arms, Leon whistles, for good measure.

“Long drop.”

Ada glances down fearlessly. He almost throws an hand to stop her.

“We’ll have to find another way to go down in case things go south.” she thinks out loud.

“You intend on things going south?”

“I personally plan on heading mid-west, so, no. But for now… downstairs it is.”

She steadily gets on her feet and, without another look for the fall, jumps up to the ridge of the roof. Leon stifles in a groan as she, seemingly effortlessly, disappears on the other side.

Her voice comes to him in a burst of glee. “The man never learns! The hatch is open, Leon.”

“Coming” he says, voice thankfully devoid of wavering, and he follows suit.

Fortunately, the precipice doesn’t catch up to him. He gets to Ada first, follows her when she disappears down the opened hatch.

The bit of light coming down the whole in the ceiling is almost useless in illuminating the dusty attic. Leon spots cardboard boxes overfilled with prints and papers. Others, stuffed with paintings, framed pictures and broken glass. Dead houseplants. Dead spiders, their webs abandoned.

“How did you know that the hatch would be open?” he asks, stepping away from the ray of light.

But a new light creeps up from the floor, and Ada is gone.

Sometimes he wonders why he even tries anymore.

  
  


* * *

 

 

Locked. Just like the previous one, and the previous. Leon is beginning to think that his luck has turned; it’s about time.

He breathes heavily against the wall, rolling his options around in the small of his palm. There aren’t many - that he’s willing to accept, anyways. No, the truth is, he already knows that he’ll go after Ada no matter the odds. Scratch that; he doesn't  _ know _ . He  _ is. _

It only takes a few strides for Leon to remove the curtains of the nearest window, letting the light dethrone the shadows until they’ve backed away in the corners. He does the same for every window he meets, merciless, mouth twisted as he makes his way to the staircase to the third floor while Ada’s probably way ahead of him by now. She left him, again. He’s told himself that he is used to it. He is.

He doesn’t realize that he’s fuming until he tears the curtain rod from the wall, pieces of plaster falling down on his head. He works his jaw. Opens the window, and stares right ahead, then down, to the gate, and the car. A rush of fresh air blows at his cheeks. Leon closes his eyes.

This is just another mission, he tells himself. The subject is reluctant, and impossible to work with, but he’ll find a way, he always found a way, because he set himself an objective back in Raccoon City so it would be less obvious that he was downright  _ terrified _ . Meet with Claire at the police station. Protect the civilians. Even if they wore an impossibly short red dress, stilettos and had a gun clasped in their hand, pointed at him. Wouldn’t it be easier to fall back into the safety of a purpose? Especially since the objective has remained unchanged through those fifteen years.

Leon leaves the window open.

The floor creaks under his steps, slower and steadier than they’ve been a couple of minutes ago. He draws out his gun. The cold metal is a slight reassurance in front of whatever’s standing behind that door. He opens it, wincing as it squeaks, only to find a room empty of life, yet another. Huffing, he goes to remove the curtains here too. In doing so, his eye catches his reflection in the glass. And a shine like an open pupil behind his shoulder.

He whips around in a gasp, finger already on the trigger.

It’s broken glass from the vanity table of the bedroom. Leon shakes his head and refrains from kicking one of its feet.

“Didn’t come here to play games.” he mutters. “I’m gonna get answers, one way or another.”

The shards don’t reply, instead sending back to him his own shattered face.

“Someone has to have at least slept here…” he thinks out loud, now rummaging through the many chest of drawers. Of course, he comes out empty, if not for washed-out undergarments that bring no significant clue to the table.

Huffing loudly so whoever has the stupidity to follow him can understand how annoyed and ready for action he is, Leon goes out the door and slams it shut, turning left to where he hasn’t yet opened the curtains. A bathroom, and further away, a parental suite, with no indication that any couple has ever lived there. The room next door is a child’s room.

Leon’s gaze falls upon the plush toys and the action figurines from another decade. Nerf guns stand alongside a GameCube, Street Fighter and Wipeout disregarded in a messy pile.

Tentatively, he inches forward, closes his fist around a frame. Two men, with lab coats, one wears glasses and the other does not, both a grin, and their hands fall proudly onto a child’s shoulders. The kid stands in between the adults. His cheeks are red, eyes shiny with excitement in spite of the quality of the old photo - it’s turned yellow at the corners. Leon removes it from the frame, swaps it around.

 

_ Nov. 16 1979 - ¡He visito el lugar de trabajo de mis papás! _

 

The hair at the back of his neck pricks up.

Leon throws himself down.

The blade slices the air above his head, missing him by half a second. Wasting no time, Leon whirls around on his crouched position and shoots, twice, two perfect shots, one at the chest, one at the throat. There should be pissing blood. Instead there’s just the obvious aura of nothing.

Shaken, Leon straightens, eyes darting from left to right.

“What the fuck…?”

Maybe that weird therapist was right: he should’ve gone for holidays. Leon isn’t that much surprised that his mind’s starting to go AWOL; the surprising part is the time it took.

Brushing away the sweat on his forehead, he exits the bedroom and closes the door behind, but never slipping the gun at his waist. He’d rather shoot at nothing and realize it was another hallucination than not being able to defend himself and stupidly dying because he’d been careless.

“Ada?” he calls out, because he’s run out of patience. “Ada?!”

Again, the lack of answer is no surprise. Either she’s near and ignoring him (wouldn’t be the first time), either she’s way down below, way ahead of him (wouldn’t be the first time). Sometimes he wonders what he’s done wrong for living in a loop of itself. He wants it to change, he wants to change, and for once gaining on her would be a victory.

He’s going to shove her out of her old habits, he decides, and his shirt sticks to his skin at the back, he doesn’t know why really, there’s no justification as to why - starting with talking her out of visiting empty, haunted manors planted between the US and Canada.

Leon brushes his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Ada?” he calls again, walking down a new hall, another, that looks just like the others but that he could swear he hasn’t gone through before.

“She ain’t gonna save you this time, comrade.”

Leon stills. His hands shake around the gun when he turns to Krauser. The man’s looking down at him, two hundred pounds of muscles bulging atrociously under the stretched skin, scars mutilating his face. His arms are crossed at his torso, but his right arm is nothing but shredded meat, enormous blue tube-like veins slipping to his belt and dripping down onto his army boots, in a  _ ploc, ploc _ that has Leon instantly step back in horror.

“So, you didn’t die.” he does, a lump in his throat. His voice quivers a little. He doesn’t get why, he’s seen people coming back from the dead before, turned into monsters, atrocities from the depths of hell, this is no different. Jack Krauser is no different. Jack Krauser can’t be here. “Or maybe you came back thanks to a new bullshit virus.”

“You always were a perceptive little shit, Leon.” Krauser says.

There’s a metallic glint, and suddenly a knife stands in his fist.

Leon steps back again, finger pressed on the trigger.

“I gained brawns.” he says, almost confidently.

His eyes flash to the blood dripping down Krauser’s ghost’s imploded arm, then the blood on the blade in his hand, and Leon isn’t afraid for himself anymore.

“Where’s Ada?” he asks, but Krauser is smiling.

“Die, comrade!”

The knife flies for his throat and Leon shoots, a bullet ricocheting off the metal, a bullet hitting Krauser between his eyes.

And just like that, it’s over.

A slow, bruised breath leaves Leon’s mouth as he kneels down to check. The corpse is cold. It feels like the wooden floor of the mansion, and it smells of dust. Heels pass by his face.

He throws himself back up - a second too late, catches the train of a red butterfly dress rounding the corner, and the distant clacking of black stilettos.

Leon murmurs her name and does what he’s always been doing.

A right turn and another right - dead end in the form of a window. He doesn’t bother removing its curtain. Turns back. Left turn, clicking of heels, far, but closer, another left. A door is ajar. Goes through it - cupboard. Turns back. “Ada?” Goes back to the hall, takes a new right.  _ a red shadow disappears at the very end _ Runs, holds out an arm, in hope to reach her, he doesn’t know, takes the right where she went

The skeleton of a demonic centaur charges to him, the mouth as a hole gaping in a guttural scream, bone tail shrieking against the wall, leaving abominable scratches like wounds in its wake.

“ _ YOU’RE NOT HALF THE MAN SHE NEEDS -” _

Leon pushes through the door on his left.

The red trail, white rabbit, vanishes down the stairs.

His legs tangle in a pedestal and the statuette of a dragon tumbles down near his head, the fragile porcelain breaking to lodge itself in his hand when he pushes himself up in a panic. He holds his bleeding hand as he crawls in the corner, frozen on the door and the silence seeping out of the hall when there should be pounding, or in the worst case scenario, shards of wood flying with the intrusion.

There’s no intrusion. No bursting door and no maddened monster with the face of Simmons. No fleeting red like a kiss blown on cheeks. Just complete, and calm, deafening quiet, and he shudders against the wall, looks up to the baby portraits.

Simmons is gone. Krauser’s body is nowhere to be found. There lacks blood at the scenes, he doesn’t get it, there should be, he fired twice, and he remembers the spit  flowing in rivers down those monstrous jaws, he remembers the pain, and the skin breaking, and its laugh and its hatred as Leon hung off the edge, one hand clawing at the platform as a foot crushed onto his fingers, tearing cries from his throat. He looked down for half a second. His vision was instantly filled with fire and smoke, and that was what he’d end up as if he let go, if he let him win, win over Ada…+

The front door is locked.

He tumbles upon it by accident, just as he thought that he’d never find the first floor, even less the main exit. Shaking the handle proves itself useless. Slamming at the door with his shoulder brings no reward but more bruises and a downgrading ego. He’s rubbing at the pain, spitting on his misery, and all of a sudden she’s in front of him with a gun in hand.

He’s looking straight into the barrel.

 

_ So it is true. _

_ True? About what? _

_ Annette was right… about everything. _

 

“Now hand me the G-virus.”

It’s her voice, but it isn’t her. It’s a red dress that hides black stilettos or falls above the knees, it’s one of the two, he isn’t sure, the barrel has him confused ( _ predictable _ ) - it’s a pencil skirt with a low-cleavage shirt, and a smirk that doesn’t falter, even as he turned around from Osmund Saddler’s decomposing corpse, the tail of her choker slapping in the wind. There’s no wind. They’re inside, trapped between eight walls, and the front door is locked.

“It’s been a long time, Leon.”

It has been approximately twenty minutes since she’s gone missing, but he has other interests outside of her internal clock.

“What are you doing?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

He’d been slowly, unnoticeably raising his weapon, hoping she wouldn’t notice, failing. He drops his hand to his sides.

“Good boy.”

She steps forward. For some reason the lines of her face are blurry, in between ages of their every encounters - a second she has pink lipstick and the other her face is bare, and her makeup is smudged, and bandages cover her chest.

She takes off the sunglasses. Her beige coat is replaced by leather pants and a cross necklace. A red scarf around her neck.

“I could’ve killed Sherry, you know.”

He blinks.

“What are you talking about?”

She cocks her head to the side.

“I’m the one that took her and her boyfriend away to be experimented on. You know it, you read the report. Still, you said nothing.” She inches forward again. He just notices that he hasn’t slipped the gun at his waist, and that his hand is shaking. “Why? Don’t you love your little girl?”

“It wasn’t you.”

“Oh, but it was.”

He blinks again, and suddenly her dress is blue, and he feels her breasts press against his back, the barrel taunting at his mouth. Her biting lips sting at his ear when she murmurs:

“I really did make you my bitch.”

 

* * *

  
  


The shadows on the dingy wall creep him out. Some have human faces, mouths open in soundless screams. Leon has to smack his palms against his ears to silence them. Still it isn’t enough, and they echo around in his skull in the form of gunshots, and his own scream of pain when the bullet pierced through his shoulder and teared apart the muscle. He remembers: when he woke up, she was gone.

Blind, he moves forward in the dark. He holds his arm. It seeps through the bandage. She hadn’t bothered to tie the gauze correctly, she hadn’t even removed his fucking shirt, she hadn’t cared, but for herself.

She had lured him into a ghost mansion with full intent of losing him just so she could satisfy her own dark intentions.

The hand trembles when Leon raises it, brushing his hair back, slick with sweat. His whole body shook with spasms as he braced himself against the wet walls of the sewers. The town was filled with monsters that fed with his cries.

Under his feet wept pieces of glass. He didn’t hear them, consumed by the lady with ice for a heart and fire in her blood. This time she wasn’t blue. She was black and red, and scared..

She opened her mouth and talked.

“ _ Get out of here. Before it’s too late _ .”

The words didn’t match the mouthing, and he shook his head, staring at the dead hound she just murdered to save his life.

 

_ Who are you? _

 

_ It’s been a long time, Leon. _

 

He shook his head forcefully. Everything was so atrociously blurry. She moved again, but he jerked forwards, and so she put her hands up.

“ _ Don’t make me laugh _ .” she said. No smile. Something wasn’t right. His head ached, dammit, it tore him in - “ _ I’m not interested in defective products. _ ”

“What?” he croaks out.

“It’s the _ just here to lend them a hand. _ Snap out of -”

“What’s going on?”

“You’re okay. Breathe.”

“Who’re you?”

“Breathe. Leon. Breathe.”


	6. Scenario B

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: extreme gore, torture, drugging.

Most of her jobs require her to lie down in a pool of leaves, stomach scratching against sharp rocks and legs unmoving until she can’t feel them anymore, which can prove itself a disadvantage if an enemy somehow spots her. But if she does move, chances to be discovered go off the roofs. Ada cares about numbers and percentages. Risks are to be avoided at all costs and missions with a success percentage under 50, she turns down. It’s a matter of survival. And that plan has worked so far.

Yes, waiting is an essential part of her job. Sitting in a car, with no other distraction but the stretching road ahead and Leon’s fingers tapping on his knee incessantly, to some beat in his head that drives her slowly insane, is not part of her job. She is self-sustaining now. She decides when a job starts, when it ends, when she gets payed and who gets the blame - it has to fall on someone in the end. Thankfully she’s already chosen her target.

Her hand taps against the wheel. Dammit. He’s infected her.

“Who’s the lucky fellah?” Leon asks.

She senses the bit of jealousy in his tone. Wouldn’t he just love to be the end game?

Ada makes out the house’s silhouette instantly. She’s only been there once, but it had marked her her soul so that only an incredibly satisfying action could replace the nightmares the Mansion gave her. The Castel gave her.

She hops off, brushing a finger along the length of her crossbow before she plants an arrow in the intercom and hardwiring the gate open. Leon trails to her ass. Leon always trails to her ass - and she can’t blame him, it’s a sight worth dying - though she’d still prefer if he’d watched out for his own just for fucking once.

Oh, she just has to lose him.

She rubs her arms when the goosebumps appear. The windows haven’t been opened in months, maybe years according to the layer of dust she finds on the sills and on the shelves. The books in the library are yellow. She flicks pages here and there, taking a vague interest in the ones written in her mothertongue, others in Spanish, enjoying from afar the biology and macro-surgery textbooks in the other bookcase. At least they’re classified. It makes it easier to find the poetry volumes. Unfortunately for Ada, her pockets aren’t big enough to contain even the small edition of _Les Fleurs du Mal_.

It doesn’t seem to matter much to her anyways.

She leaves the library with clear possession of the blueprints of the mansion: she arrives into a hallway, leaves it for another room, its walls painted with pictures in frames, similar to the ones in the attic. They aren’t family photographs, but children pictures. Every inch square displays a still with various degrees of cuteness, going from adorable to just plain awkward to look at. The child goes through multiple ages; it’s chubby, barely a few months old, bubbling and smiling up to the camera with barely enough hair to indicate it as human baby. The more she steps into the room, the older it gets, turning into a boy with sparkly eyes, to an eleven-year-old in the space of a few frames. Turning to the right wall, Ada realizes that the collection is incomplete.

She might have an idea why.

Delicately, she squeezes her fingers around the statuette of Quetzalcóatl that’s replacing the missing frames, set like an artifact on a pedestal. She turns it over, inspects its paw. Curiosity satisfied, she lets it down where it should be.

Straightening, she listens carefully for noise a staircase over. The floor above her creaks, dust seeping down onto the dimly lit room. Leon’s finally decided to find some place else than the attic to be. It’s time to bail.

After pulling a random book she slides in the door that opened for her, entering the maid’s hidden kitchen. She knees down to observe the inside of the chimney. Thick soot stains its insides, which are too thin to allow a human being to slide down or up. A rat could. It would probably suffocate before reaching the breathable surface.

The next door gives way to a narrow spiral staircase. She descends until her breath comes out in steam, and then she knows she’s arrived her destination.

Two distinct gunshots, then dead silence.

Ada doesn’t move, ears and eyes open, scanning into the dark of the cave, unmoving, unblinking. She’s part of the décor, one with the dingy wall - and she waits.

The silence weighs against her eardrums until it threatens to implode inside her. The patient friction of her clothes against the air bursts into the quiet place. It instantly lightens her heart heavy with worry.

She erases the stiffness of her shoulders in a shrug. Leon’s survived through worse than a ghost mansion.

Her heels clink like claws against the tiles of the cave. The flashlight at her breast indicates that the place has once been white and sanitary, which is far from the case today. Left abandoned, it inspires the urge to turn around and walk away to anyone who might have the brilliant idea to enter. Her light shines on glass doors and debris of clutter, spread so that she has to eventually walk on it to cross the hall and get to the main chamber. A vixen’s smirk sparks on her lips.

He’s here.

(two new gunshots, maybe two floors above, and she almost jolts, almost, just almost)

“That’s a nice donjon you got there.”

Her voice explodes the silence, ricocheting off the walls and into the darkness ahead that even her light has trouble piercing through. Far away, a clatter.

The smirk becomes chuckle.

“Really impressive staging. I can’t imagine the work and thoughts it took behind the scenes. You’ve really gotten me impressed here… Pat.”

Silence is thrown back at her. She doesn’t seem to acknowledge the blow.

“Told you I’d come back!” she sing-songs. “A long time coming, sure, but have I ever broken a promise?”

She’s now entering the main chamber. It’s a circle of a room at the end of the rectangle that are the  diverse laboratories. Symmetry gives away the mad. Every one of Ada’s steps are measured with a tape.

She stops.

An emptied bottle at her feet. A chair, in the middle of the white and red paint of the floor. A man in that chair.

The smile oozes down.

“Patricio Castel.”

Ada launches herself at him like a vulpture. She seizes him by the jaw, forces his mouth open, and thrusts two fingers down his throat. He gags, and flails, sickly pushing her off. Ada is having none of that. Resting a heel on his torso, she shoves him backwards with the chair he’s on, digging him onto the giant umbrella on the floor and pushing deeper, as deep as her fist allows it, until he vomits the pills out, the spurt missing her collar by an inch. She straightens, disgusted, quickly rolls the still intact capsules to their bottle.

The carer has finished vomiting. He’s now puking bile, sobbing foam onto the white and red.

“Pathetic.” Ada comments.

He responds with a burp. Rolling her eyes, she leans down to grab the chair and push it back up. Collectedly, she takes two arrows from the quiver, impales both his hands on the armchairs. Then, she places herself before him, crouching at his knees, looking up to the beads of sweat at his receding hairline and his mouth, open in sobs.

“You used to put up such a fight.” she says, almost softly. Her tone mimics empathy. There’s none to give. “Look what you’ve become. What would Aaron say? What would Jack say?” His eyes widen, and tears well up in them. Soon they roll down his neck, mixing up with the sweat in a distasteful blend. Ada scrunches up her nose, pretending a brutal flashback. She taps her cheek with a finger. “Oh. _Right_. Aaron left you because Jack died, by your hand, nonetheless.”

He spits in her face. She spits right back at him in the form of a slap. When he looks back at her, eyes unfocused, she’s happy to see blood taint his front teeth.

“You believed you could hide in this place.” she continues as though nothing happened. “You _honestly believed_ that a Mansion, lost in the Slash, a clear memorial of the Spencer family, could potentially hide a dying race like you from someone like me.”

It looks like he wants to say something. She tilts her head to the side in an invitation. The words come out in a foamed whisper.

“You’re a psychopath.” What else can she do but nod willingly? “We sh… d’ve left you to rot as a kid -”

“You definitely should have.” Really, she’s impressed by his willingness to fight; she thought he’d have none at all after that suicide attempt. But the carer has always been a resistant soul. “Just like you should have kept little Jack at home where he belonged, with his loving family and nice little cars to play with... Now say it.”

He won’t meet her stare. She slaps him, harder. His left eye goes askew.

“Say that you sent your only son, the one you vowed to cherish to the killing floor like cattle just so satisfy your male ego and desire for power.”

“I...”

“Say it.”

“I never did such thing!” He’s sweating hard, red and begging, clenching the armrests with white knuckles, shards of wood piercing his palms. “I wanted him to become the best! He would have made us proud, Aaron and I! I've never meant for him to die -”

“What kind of parent sends their child to the School in full knowledge that only three percent of the candidates step out of it alive -”

Ada doesn’t mean to snap. Her keyword has always been composure; sentiments are compromising, and the collected mask is the finest shield against personal involvement. Ada’s already lying to herself about that part. She hasn’t expected her body to betray her as well - and her fist meets his cheek, harder than she's intended, with the same energy she's beat up Simmons with merely a year ago.

His head lolls stupidly. She hits him again to wake him up. Only a groan escapes his mouth.

“We are far from finished here.” she promises, her fingers digging into the skin as she forces his jaw up.

He tries to spit again. The most pathetic spurt of blood trails down his chin. “Wh- what are you going to do with me?”

Cats toy with their food; they never actually end up eating it if they’re well fed. Ada’s a house cat. She comes to purr, shoving her tail in the face of the rare ones she cares about if they protect her to satisfaction. But if any other looks her way, even so as gift a hand to smell? _You don’t bite the hand that feeds you_. But rage can sometimes be a decent fuel.

“I haven’t got that much time, unfortunately.” she pouts. “I’ll have to end this quicker than expected.” She approaches her face to his until all he can see is her red. “You should’ve swallowed those pills earlier, Pat.”

She remembers her first torture session. Not the one they’d inflicted on her, they’d been so many sessions that they’d all ended up blurring in - but the first living being she’d tortured. She remembers Patricio, the carer, a notebook and a pen behind her, a white coat on for the blood projection. He had guided her through. She hadn’t enjoyed it. She had cried, and she had been slapped and sent back to the bunk with a food ban for two days. _That’ll give you a reason to cry for_ , he had said. _No un puto conejo._

 

(She remembers a man with blue eyes and a clenched jaw, young and attentive, and he’d become her employer a decade later; but that’s a story for another chapter.)

 

Turns out cutting a rabbit’s ears off is not as simple as theory makes it sound, no matter if the knife had been previously sharpened. Her technique had been off (she’d had none), and she’d yelped when the first squirts of blood had maculated her face, and the bunny had screamed, it had jerked in all directions in a poor attempt at escape.

The carer yelps when the dagger bites into his lobe, he spasms a little uncontrollably but he doesn’t try to escape. There’s no point, just like there’s no point in trying to appear courageous, but he does anyway. It looks to Ada that he wants a glorious death. There’s no glory in being chopped off piece by piece. She articulates the knife around, twisting it into the most resistant morsels until it comes off and falls at their feet, and Patricio wishes he had swallowed those pills just a tiny bit earlier.

Torture is used as a way to get to a mean in the form of an answer. Torture is a quiz, followed by death if the given reply doesn’t meet preselected standards. Ada hasn’t asked any question.

“Should I try the second ear?” she says innocently. “Or do I get a little more creative?”

“Just put a bullet through my head.” Patricio mumbles.

She shakes her head. “Nah. Remind me how Jack died again.” Now he is crying so hard the chair shakes as she wanders the chinese daggers over his shirt. “Would you like me to refresh your memory?”

“Jack… he…”

“Died.” she completes, sighing. “ _Creativity is key_ , Pat. Get creative for me, or I will.” And so she presses the very tip into his navel, enough to draw blood that soon fills the cloth in an aureola. He screams, quickly biting his tongue.

“No, please, don’t hold it in. How did Jack die?”

She digs a little deeper.

“An accident!”

“No.”

“A… an acci -”

“No.”

She goes deeper, and deeper, until she feels what she was searching for. Grabbing it tightly, she squeezes, and his consciousness gives out. Shame. If pain can free him, it can also bring him back, so she doesn’t take a break to wait for him to open his eyes.

She pulls the intestine out in the cold air, watches it squirm and bleed out on the man’s lap. She wipes her hand on his shirt.

Ada’s in the middle of a thorough excavation when his raw scream indicates her that Patricio has awakened. It’s about time, she is almost done.

“Jack was _gutted_.” she says tranquidly. “Alive, by your colleagues, because they believed his blood was special, and they wanted to find out more about it. Jack was the first friend I made,” she continues, standing back up. He’s dying. She recognizes the smell. “and he was the only child you had. We both learnt better than ever getting attached, in the end.”

She watches the body for a long time, trying to extract the feelings out of her, feelings she can’t place a name on. Are they even feelings? Is she even feeling anything - relief, satisfaction, repugnance? - after killing the first of the many that’ll follow? She should. And she feels herself tremble, enough to throw herself on her knees and beg to feel, anything, _please_.

Stamping glass makes her blood turn to ice.

 _Right. She’d forgotten about him_.

Ada turns around.

“Leon, please. Put the gun down.”

He shakes his head. Something isn’t right, his breathing’s too short, like a rabbit’s, nose running, and the flashlight at her breast illuminated his red eyes, crazed and desperate. She tries a step forward, but a jerk of his arm makes her prefer the most peaceful option.

“You’ve been poisoned.” she says as he cries. “I’m sorry, I should have told you, but I couldn’t, I needed to… no, don’t look. Look at me.”

“What?”

“It’s the gas. It’s not you. Snap out of it, put the gun down, please.”

“What’s going on?”

“You’re okay. Breathe.”

“Who’re you?”

“Breathe. Leon. Breathe.”

He hesitates. She delicately takes the gun away from him. Her hand goes up to brush his forehead, down to his cheek. It rests there. Thumb soothing the skin, until she takes him in her arms and caresses his hair. She drops off a kiss on the blond strands. He sweeps his tears on her shirt. She would usually mind.

“You’re okay, Leon. The effects are already wearing off.”

His shivers die out in her arms. She hates herself for forgetting him.

“Did you poison me?”

Ada lets him go.

“No. The entire manor was protected from intruders by a terror gas.”

“You… you’re okay, though.”

Ada nods. “I’m used to it.” He’s looking away at something behind her. She takes his hand, lures him to her, blocks his sight from the arrows nailing two hands on the armchairs. “Let’s get out of here.”

She takes his hand and he follows, numbly. He holds on to the feeling of their palms pressing together like he’s the freshman at the school winter ball, and Jean has agreed to dance with him, but his stomach bottoms out and threatens to empty on the floor.

“Ada…”

“Here.”

He dumbly does what he’s told and presses the cloth against his mouth, breathing harshly through it. They go up the stairs, back to the first floor.

“What...”

“No.”

Her palm is sticky with his sweat, and he stares at it. Jean had been second choice. He hadn’t meant to dance with her, he’d just accepted her request because he’d have no partner for the ball otherwise. He remembers the day she dumped him. September 28, 1998.

“Ada, stop.”

Something in his voice, low, like a rattle. It makes Ada swirl around as though he’d yanked her back

Leon shakes his head.

He takes a step back, and another, and Ada just stands there, and her hand that was held out for him falls against her thigh, useless.

“It’s the gas talking.” she says, as though she already knows. "The Castel set it as a trap in case of intruders. It's the gas."

It’s not.

“It’s not.”

“Then it’s -”

“I want out.” he says.

Dread claws in her stomach. She thinks about Jack Castel and the day he knocked on her bunk door before he disappeared. _I need to go._ he had said. _Or they’re going to get me_.

“You left me.” he says.

Her voice turns to ice. It’s a way to protect herself when she knows she’s in the wrong. “You’re highly capable of handling yourself.”

“You didn’t tell me about the gas.”

“I didn’t tell you because you’re _a big boy,_ Leon.”

 

 _"I really did make you my bitch_."

 

“You know what?” he says, and he doesn’t think. “You can go fuck yourself.”

Ada’s mouth opens, and closes, in shock.

“ _I’m sorry?_ ”

“You fucking heard me. Next time you pull a stunt like that, I won’t be there to shield you from a bullet again.”

“Oh no, you don’t.” she snarls, and she invades his personal space again but this time, not to take him in an embrace. “Last time I checked, Leon Kennedy was no pussy. He doesn’t quit a job at the smallest hitch.”

“No.” he breathes, looking down at her in disgust. “I quit a job when it’s a lost cause, and you’re a lost cause, Ada. All you care about is yourself. You’d leave me to die if it meant a little more revenge on your hands.”

The last pieces of pretty of her face contort into something ugly. “ _Don’t you fucking dare joke about th_ -”

The roof explodes over their heads. Leon’s first instinct is to throw himself down as the walls wobble, though that he’s sure it’s because the drug is still wearing off. He isn’t seeing copies of Ada now, just the aching truth, the reality of the red handprints she leaves on the floor when she crouches.

“Something else you need to tell me?” he questions angrily.

“Damnit.” Ada replies, eyeing the locked front door, then going to the main living room something like thirty feet away.

“It’s the bioweapon, isn’t it?” he says. She sprints to the room and seizes of one of the chairs around the big table. “Isn’t it?!”

“It’s trying to get through via the chimney.” she snaps. He notices the panic in her voice and comes to help. Somewhere, in the midst of the chaos, Leon is glad that the hideous monster got replaced by the same mask he's seen for fifteen years.

“I thought it was too big to even get through a forest -”

Shrieks of claws against tiles, scratching inside his ears painfully. He grits his teeth and throws a chair against the window.

“Harder!” Ada spits.

“What the fuck do you think I’m doing!”

She plows her chair into the window. Its feet break, and the glass cracks in its center like a cobweb fluttering to the outer corners of the window. It still isn’t enough. Leon braces himself just as Ada hammers home that it’s here that it’s entered (he can hear it screech down the conduit, thank you) and the window shatters just as the chair explodes in his hands, reopening the wounds of his palms. They run through the opening and hit the exit gate and get to the car, Ada sprinting inside and keying the engine, their every gesture coordinated.

“Step on it!” Leon barks. The shattered window gapes, taunting at them, and he feels, knows that any second now something that’s straight out of one of his nightmares is going to crawl out of it. Another Krauser, another Simmons, not an hallucination.

“What the fuck do you think I’m doing?” Ada snaps, throwing her head behind to watch the road as she pummels her foot down the accelerator. The car jerks backwards. Leon grabs the handle when he feels his neck crack dangerously. He opens his mouth to tell her to go faster

“Faster”

but there’s this shape at the broken window, it projects its shadow on the grass of the yard, and Leon’s bark dies in his throat. He feels himself stiffen in his seat.

“Ada” he manages to croak out. She knows.

“I know, hold on!”

Mechanically, he pulls out his gun and fires. Two shots, perfect, land on their target that shrugs them off as breeze.

Ada does a U-turn that has Leon’s body smack into the door violently. He whips around in his seat to aim at their rear, eyes widening when he realizes that the target is nowhere in sight.

His anxiety ramps up.

“Ada, it’s gone.”

Her tongue clicks in annoyance. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

That’s when he notices the dark veil coming down onto the car, and the tyres screech when Ada spins the wheel, and Leon’s head hits the windshield.


	7. Dry Well

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter inspired by Pierre Bottero. This is still unbeta-ed... I hope it doesn't mean that the quality of the writing is in decrease. I'm trying hard to make it not the case. Also even if Ada isn't presented in a good light, it's because she's my favorite character and I love her and her flaws :3
> 
> TW: graphic gore (it's fucking resident evil I shouldn't even mention it at this point lol)

The man pins himself down, nose in the mud, trying desperately to disappear under the heavy layer of dead leaves filled with water. Every last inch of his body is dedicated to one goal: disappear. To become noiseless. Odorless. He moves to smear more filth on his arms, until the skin itself becomes brown. It’s a matter of life and death.

Something brushes against his fingers. He almost yanks them away before he notices that it’s her, with an index brought to her lips in a command.

 _You’re making too much noise_.

He frowns.

_I know._

He’s cold and hot at the same time, and fears he’s running a fever. The injury at the back of his head radiates with pain like chalk against a white board, hammer against an anvil, or an head against a windshield.

Footsteps.

No, that’s not the way to call it.

The foot crushes the tree’s roots under its weight, unearthly breathing streaming out of gaping nostrils and the air distinctly heats up, and Leon cooks in the mud, burying himself deeper, holding his breath when his lungs already feel like exploding. It’s thirty, maybe twenty feet away from them. It breathes in their direction, its tails like whips snaking at the leaves. They fall around them in a small tornado.

Suddenly her hand is in his.

She’s looking straight into him, eyes wide, chest unmoving, holding it in; and her hand is cold in his hand. He can’t move it away, It will know their location. Resigned, there’s nothing he can do but hold her stare, and ache, silently.

It leaves in heavy stamps.

They breathe out.

She’s the first to stand. Her legs wobble a little and she relies on a tree to catch her balance. There, she takes a moment to reconsider their situation while he stands up next to her, at his own pace. His head shoots him throbs of pain. Comforting hands, bloodied hands, she silently moves to cradle his skull and inspect the wound. He lets her, watches her as she steps away. Her face is unreadable.

 _Let’s go_ , he decides.

She sees the movement of his hand. She nods.

They’re heavy. He has to bow before gravity, back bent over the blows. He’s reminded of the weight every time his eyes meet her stare, filled with worry, or maybe it’s just incomprehensible nothing. So he gives her a nickname, one that hurts less than the memory of Ada and his story with her; she’s the Woman. The first he’s ever loved, the one he’ll ever love, on her way to destroy him.

Fifteen years.

He’s heavy. He tumbles over (cracked vase, knocked tree) and she catches him, the noise deafened by the moss. The hair on her bare arms stand on their end with the cold, elegant fi

_I really did make you my_

with the cold, elegant fingers brushing on the mud on his skin like it could warm him up. He makes a low noise that reaches all the way to her chest. He doesn’t mean for it to come out sounding the way it does, like it hurts, when he hates to show pain.

That’s probably the most negative characteristic the two share.

She shushes him, finger on lips. Perhaps she actually means for him to shut up, because It could spot them for just breathing in Its general direction - though he knows she’s applying white powder over her features, falling prey to the game even she came to the result was done for almost two decades ago; in another lie, to the world, to herself. Leon himself believed the game had been called off, believed the queen had fallen, and he had crushed the sample of death under his boot and cried for his love for the first of many times, each time deep into the belief that this one was the last.

She closes herself off like she doesn’t care about whatever effect she has on him (call it love, or hate, they’re jumbled up in an impossible mess making his head spin), but Leon knows. He’s seen the ugly in her. He’s seen the beauty in her, the red all men crave, the kiss he only gets.

_on the blond strands. he sweeps his tears on her shirt_

They’re way too alike for his liking. The same terror for weakness in a world with no mercy.

Honor.

He’s honored, to be the One, to be her Man. There’s times when he lays at night, in the double bed of the empty apartment, and the covers are pulled back, and the curtains are risen high to let the moon drop its crescents onto his lonely form. There, he’s alone with her in his thoughts, hands wandering down in quest for the interdiction. He wants to be hers, needs to be, otherwise he doesn’t know if there would be a point in being. She’s a mission. Missions own him. Not the other way around.

Disgust.

At himself, at his fragility and the way she has him around her pinkie. See, the ease she lured him into the mess they’re in: she just had to wait and drop a few drops of blood on his front mat. Two exhales later and he came in rushing to carry her bridal style on his charger, as always forgetting that roses have thorns, especially the red.

  
  


They find a cabin, eventually. It doesn’t seem to belong to any country, any decade. They stick around to gather tools and food. Canned peaches and pasta. Leon keeps the peaches for tomorrow. They share the pasta, and eat like post-apocalyptic survivors. He longs for civilization.

“We have to find a vehicle.” he tells her once they made sure It was out of genetically enhanced ear’s reach. “Anything to get out of the woods.”

She agrees.

“Don’t forget about stitching you up.”

“For now, let’s find a road to follow.”

She stretches, bending over to touch her toes. He looks away. He scratches at his skin.

“Let’s clean you up. I don’t like the looks of your head.”

He snorts. “Just say you find me repulsive and go.”

She looks at him dead in the eye. “I wouldn’t lie.”

It sounds so low and fake he’s left breathless.

“Shut up.” he whispers, and he dips his head, running a tired hand along his face, thumbs pressing against the eyelids until stars shoot out of his blue. He doesn’t see her shoulders crumple and shake; just once, the moment is over, and she’s already bending an arm like a scarf, making the shoulder pop joyfully.

“I heard what sounded like a river out the cabin. It will mask the noise from our big friend and get us rid of all this mud.”

In another lifetime, he’d have told her that she looked beautiful no matter her state. In another lifetime.

Leon does his best not to fall head first into the water. He gets hold of a trunk when he gets his shoes off, soaked socks included. He unbuckles his belt, gets rid of his pants, throws the disgusting shirt over his head and into the river with the rest of his shit. It slowly runs there, in a circle that splits into a patchwork mixed with the woman’s undergarments. Again, he looks away.

“Jesus” he has the time to mutter before she calls out for him.

“Care to find company into a lonely girl?”

Teeth gritted, Leon braces himself before jumping in. By jumping in, I do actually mean slowly rinsing his feet, then stepping in until his waist is swallowed under the surface. His fists are white, muscles tense and shaking as he slowly immerges his higher half, taking in a breath and meeting her smiling eye before the cold water comes to lick at his chin, his nose, he closes his eyes, his forehead.

Sinking.

The pain awakens.

 

_The car burst into flames when Ada was dragging him further away from the treeline. Two detonations. She was sent on her stomach by an invisible fist, sheltered his head with her hands by holding him close to her heart, the skin of her back roasted and her thoughts filled with smoke. She shielded his body with hers, panting heavily, countless abrasions scarring her forearms and her legs._

_“Leon” she mouthed. “Leon”_

_Leon had his eyes open, chest heaving to her, and every breath shooting blood on her hands._

_“Car” he said._

_She pressed a hand against his mouth, nodded furiously, pointed at the clouded sky._

It’s still there.

 _He looks up to the crown. Two immense wings knead the pines, shooting the needles in downed helicopters. Attached to the wings, a human form, grotesquely enlarged and misshapen, too huge of a head for atrophied legs. It was clean-shaven, its bald skull showing off the set of teeth from a grinning mouth, and at the end of abnormally long fingers, whips languidly run to the floor along_ , _in imitation to the one like an extension of its spinal cord._

Can you run? _Ada asked in an hasty tilt of the chin._

_He didn’t know, so he tried. She threw his arm on her shoulders, tripping with him. High above, It shrieked._

 

Leon breaks through the surface in a gasp, running his hand along the outlines of the wound. He’s scared when he finds his fingertips ocher.

She joins him in a slow breaststroke. “Give it time.” she murmurs.

He chuckles humorlessly. “Wish I had my herbs.”

“Yeah” she sighs, and she twists to float on her back. “I could go for a drag.”

He considers it. “Not what I had in mind, but… that’d be freaking welcome.”

The current carries her around. He had convinced his eyes not to follow her, not to trail her. He hadn’t carved the command deep enough. It adds onto the pile in the bottom of the well.

She floats, arms outspread and eyes closed, and every part of her is immersed but her mouth, and her nose, and her breasts with perky nipples. Her shoulder blades are fragile birds that struggle in the current. She looks cold, he can see the stiff hair at her arms and legs. Around her head, a crown of ink melds in with the water.

Leon has never taken interest in paintings, or art in general. As part of the presidential escort, he remembers a visit at the Quai d’Orsay a couple of years ago. The US and France had exchanged collections. Leon hadn’t figured out why exactly, why that piece in particular, but he’d lingered there, defying orders, shocked by the porcelain of the woman’s exposed skin and the provocation in her stare that surpassed the brushes.

He couldn’t remember its title.

“Can we talk now?” Leon asks tentatively.

She doesn’t indicate any interest. “It’s on you if we get eaten.”

He rubs the mud off his fingers, then his nails, conscientiously. “What exactly happened at the mansion?”

She swallows air in, inflating her chest. Leon rubs harder.

“I told you.”

“You really didn’t.”

“You got gas poisoned and nearly shot my head o-”

“Enough with the bullshit. You knew there was gas and you used it to run away from me, thinking I’d accept you as you are, a manipulator.” he says, and she looks struck, eyes snapping open to stare at the calm weariness he incarnates. “And what the gas made me see…”

It’s at this point that his voice cracks. He doesn’t trust himself to go any further.

He looks back to her and she’s mere inches away from him. He’s ice-cold, and she worries.

“What did you see?”

“What did you do to that man?”

She swims past him, grabbing her clothes on her way back to the bank. The Woman surfaces through the delicate eerie evening light, bare feet avoiding the snaps of dead branches and glorious nakedness cracking his neck.

“I killed him.” she replies noncommittally.

“Before that.”

“I tortured him.”

“Why?”

She crouches to wring her panties above the current.

“It’s personal.”

“There was a kid, with loving parents in that house.” he snaps. “Did you kill him?”

Her mouth has a twinge. “No. I killed his father.”

“Fuck.” He washes his hair, dreaming of shampoo and a different partner than an infernal vengeress. “Self-defense? Retribution?”

“Both.”

“He with the people that shot you?”

“I doubt it. No. I hope not. I don’t know everything.”

“More than me. There’s so many infos adding to the board I can’t link them all.”

“To sum it up” she starts, straightening with their wet but purged clothes on her forearm, “we’re on the run from an institution that wants to kill us, yet another bioweapon that has the same goal, I got a list and you got a plan.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “I have a plan?”

“You do. It started with reuniting with Claire Redfield.” she sings, and she crooks a finger for him to get out of the river. “Tell me how it goes.”

He disregards the command. “I… I haven’t had the time to think this far ahead, okay? I was a little busy getting maimed.”

“Oh, really? What maimed you, Leon?”

“The bioweapon, and Krauser, and… Jesus fucking Christ.” he finishes lamely. She pretends innocence. He doesn’t fake anything. “Stop. Ada, stop. I don’t wanna talk about it, I told you.”

“Fine. I don’t wanna talk about it. Now get out of there. You’ll freeze, and I know you and I both would rather keep your cock its original size.”

Leon flips her off. She laughs. He doesn’t.

Because there’s this seductive smile on her lips that she always gets when she knows she’ll get what she wants through sex. Leon doesn’t believe how the hell she can think that. He has never been more estranged from the need to fuck her in a fucking forest.

So he stares.

“C’mon.” she says, a plead in a smile. “Get out of the water.”

“No.”

“It’s getting dark.”

“I don’t care.”

She pulls that wild strand behind her ear. She doesn’t look amused anymore. Good.

“Leon. You’re acting like a damn toddler.”

“Says who?”

“Says the bitch who has your clothes, or would you rather face that B.O.W butt naked?”

He walks to the bank, the water slurping at his knees. “You don’t get to be pissed at me. I’m pissed at you.”

“You get the monopole of emotions now?”

“Why not? I’ve been feeling for two for fifteen years, I think I deserve that right.”

“...I feel too. More than you know.”

“I’m tired, Ada. I’m so tired.”

“I know.”

“You lie.”

“I know.”

“You leave.”

“...I know.”

They share a look.

She tosses him his pants.

Leon almost smiles when he puts them on. He won.

  


He pours the alcohol over his head, slapping a hand against his mouth to quiet down his cry. She watches around them, spool of gauze ready and dagger pulled out from behind the tree. The immortal crossbow dangles at her hip. She doesn’t comment when he chugs down what’s left of the bottle.

 _Okay?_ she asks.

He doesn’t even spare her a glance. The top of the forest groans under the flutter of something stronger than the gusts of the wind. Clouds hoard up, have been in a while, threatening to spill.

 _Gotta move_.

_Wait._

She juts her hand out, grabbing his elbow. He slides back down against the tree, frozen into place, swallowing the lurching of his stomach somewhere deeper, where it will never see the light of day, where she will never see an hint from it (even though she knows, but it hurts to try).

She wraps the bandage around his head and he looks like a goddamn fool, and all he can think about is that if a single touch has such a visceral effect on him… he can only think about his response if she attempted to love. If she decided to die. No matter how resentful he wishes he’d be, would his actions betray him?

Leon feels himself lean into the familiar and forever easy way out that is denial.

  


It’s finally raining.

He squeezes the life out of his chest and shakes the wet hair out of his eyes, unsuccessfully. He shivers, too. The alcohol hasn’t lasted long and he hasn’t swallowed nearly enough to warm him up, now he is left with watching the Woman walk ahead, leading the way, and he sends prayers to the sky for the rain to quickly mask their footprints in the mud. They haven’t caught sight of It since the day before yesterday, and they haven’t eaten since yesterday. His insides twitch with emptiness sometimes.

“You’re pale.” she says. He hasn’t noticed her turning around.

“Don’t monitor me.” he snaps back.

She works her jaw, blowing on the rain falling from her nose. He relishes on the feeling that he makes her feel.

“Why don’t you give a smile for once, hum?” she does with the enormous lie of a smile - oh, irony. “It would make this walk in the park so much more enjoyable.”

“My life isn’t fiction.”

She tilts an eyebrow up. “Look, I’m the only one even remotely _trying_ here.” He shoots her a glare. She throws her arms up in surrender. “Yes, I’m genuinely worried for your health, Leon. Your head went through a windshield, you contracted a fever - believe it or not, I’ve noticed, and you haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon.”

He secures around his shoulders the backpack they found in a vacant camp. “Your only way to apologize is to lure me into… into sleeping with you. Try harder.”

He aimed for the heart. Bullseye.

Her face twists, that same wave of ugly oozing back onto her, so familiar and so repulsive and he wants to drag her into her arms to erase the violence of his words, so he hates her, tries to, hates her, because he can’t feel anything else but love.

“Would you look at that.”

There’s a patrol car, not so hidden aligned with the Slash. Leon wonders how he hasn’t noticed the flashlights before - the ones the two policemen are aiming at them from the hood of the car, and once again they’re deer caught in the headlights.

Leon doesn’t have time for that shit.

One of the two men - the oldest, steps forward in a sigh. He shines a light on her face while she stands his gaze.

“You two got passports, I imagine?”

“Obviously.” Leon mutters between his teeth. A touch from her fingers implores him calm.

“Good evening, gentlemen.” she says, and Leon instantly screws his eyes shut. Mainly because the guard is now directing his flashlight at him, but also because she’s about to fuck it up beautifully. “We’re just reckless ramblers looking for a thrill. Am I wrong to believe that white privilege is our way out of this?”

“Holy shit” the second policeman says. He’s much younger, wide eyes worryingly staring at Leon. “What in the hell happened to you two?”

Leon looks down his bruised hands, palms with unclean wounds and the clear lack of hygiene they both reek of. He scratches at the bandage around his forehead. She’s seemingly better, but her once beautiful shorts are torn at the edges and her knees red and muddy. Her hair trickles down her neck, to the high of her shoulder blades, and he flinches, taking in just now their length. She’s got the smallest of scars on her cheek.

He turns back to their opponents, blinking the fog of pain away.

“Monsters.” he grits, deadpan. The old one scoffs loudly.

“Wild bears?” the other one guesses, stepping forward. “They’re an infection in the region.”

“Mark, that ain’t our problem.” the first snaps. “C’mon, you two. ID.”

She’s looking at him. Leon stares back. Finally, he sighs.

“We don’t have ID.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Put those hands up.”

They glance at each other. They don’t move an inch. Perhaps she makes her tongue click in annoyance, but that’s it. So the patrol guard screws his light in her face and grabs his firearm.

Mark protests. “Man, let’s not -”

“Rookie, shut the fuck up. They’re disobeying direct orders from a police officer, and they violated the law. I’m in the right to threaten little chink here.”

She looks mildly bored. Brushing a strand off of her eyes, “Nice car”, she slides the bag off her back, hands it to Leon who starts to chew his tongue to stay focused.

The cop raises the gun to her chest. The rookie’s eyes dart to Leon. He just winces. “What are you doing?”

Her foot softens the wet leaves when she takes a step, and he can hear the rain pour down her shape, down the stressed nerves of her arms and her tight abdomen. He recognizes the serene clenching of her jaw like he knows his own heart. That’s why he took her bag, after all.

Leon squeezes his fists in response.

“Stay where you are!”

The rookie takes an hesitant step back. “Should I call for backup -?”

“I said -”

The gun shoots out of his grip no matter how firmly secured. She catches it in midair. The barrel faces its previous owner. Gasps. A haughty tilt.

A click.

She turns the gun to Mark.

The rookie’s got his own arm aimed at her. It’s shaking, wide eyes, terrified eyes shining at her. It must be the first time that he’s had to use a gun against a real person. Leon’s first had been already dead.

 

_really only sees the doctor’s body hit the floor_

_and the splash of blood spray on the_

 

“Ada, no!” he yells.

She flinches, and the older cop seizes her fist, tries to yank it, break it. She cries out and elbows him in the face, sends him to kiss a puddle with a swipe of the leg. Whirling, literal storm without fear nor hesitation, and her tongue is sticking out from her teeth, little pink snake of a merciless smirk. And suddenly, the rookie can’t move, staring straight into the shallow, pale in front of Death Herself.

Leon comes to place himself between the gaping mouth of the gun and the terrified kid.

“Ada, no.” he repeats, slower.

She stares, and stares, and there’s a sense of familiarity too, like they’ve been there before. He remembers: he had checked, after she’d fallen, and the chamber had been empty.

Her eyes widen, and Leon throws himself on her before she can kick him out of the way. The gun goes off - wrong gun, and they yelp, out of fear, and out of pain when a hammer that has the shape of a very solid soil meets Leon’s skull and the noise and the shock reverberate through him. He breathes in the humus, and the rain, until the agony drains out. The first cop has recovered from his violent encounter with the ground. He’s raising up, and Leon sees him see him. His arms scream when he pushes on them, fist swinging, hitting the jaw, shoulder slamming against a thick root with the abrupt end of the momentum. The cop’s out again. Hand pressed against his heart, head pounding, Leon breathes out.

The Woman is looking down at the rookie, disappointment etched onto her every muscle.

“Congratulations, you’ve just doomed us all.”

Leon scrambles to his knees, a gravity he didn’t know existed until now pulling him the side. He sways. Doesn’t really catch his balance but with his palms in the muck. Above, the growl of thunder lashes down around them. Zeus himself has decided to intervene.

“Fuck” he swears. It’s gratuitous. “We gotta hide.”

If their three-hours walk into the depths of the forest hadn’t drenched him earlier, he most certainly is now. The rain seeps through his clothes and his bandage, colder, quicker than blood. His limbs are frozen when he forces them to move, again, a groan of pain scratching its way out of his throat when he seizes the woman’s wrist.

“We gotta hide.” he says. In her case, he always had to repeat twice for it to sink in, sometimes more, until he lost count and had to start over. She blinks away from the rookie. Disarmed, the kid is frozen on spot. He stupidly trails his eyes to the start of the storm.

Throwing herself down, she rolls on her stomach under the car. Leon knees to join her. It’s the rookie’s impossible stillness that stops him.

“Come on.” Leon says, and the boy looks down just as the first monstrous screech, mix of human scream and demonic warning, splits the air apart. His head snaps back up. Leon takes the kid by the neck and pummels him down without waiting for another death.

She doesn’t seem to particularly enjoy moving to the side to give way for another person. Fuck her. The life of an innocent is worth more than the sweet on her tongue.

“Please just -”

Leon smacks a palm onto the rookie’s mouth, hard like a slap, scared like a deer in the middle of the road, and the now familiar shiver of horror and dread shake them two - they stop breathing, and Leon holds the rookie tighter, the skin becoming white where it’s being clawed at. The kid’s eyes are filled with adrenaline, almost disgustingly bugging out, not widening, but bugging out with the pressure.

Ahead two knobbly knees whack against the ground.

The fissure in Leon’s head throbs in a continuous beat, enough to make him think he’s the one that should have a gag. The thing stands like a man - on wobbly limbs, he can see the stagger when it goes to the cop’s inanimate body. It moves and it’s too bulky, bowing before the heaviness of gravity. It’s even a miracle that it managed to land due to its size.

What size is it exactly? Leon doesn’t have the answer. The more he stares at its scaly feet (the only thing he can see under the car), the more he thinks it’s about the average woman’s size, but then he remembers looking up to the sky with his skull split in two and seeing an inflated head on top of a misshapen torso, and two dragon-esque wings. Then again, how it looks like doesn’t matter. How it dies does. At the corner of his eye, She shifts.

The thing touches the inert cop. It actually bows to roll him over onto his back, claws gently examining the slow expansion of his lungs. It doesn’t touch him more than that. It just breathes down on him, its wings carefully folded behind its back, and it weakly stands up on hind legs. It could be pathetic if it wasn’t the reason of their non-consensual hide-and-seek.

The woman crawls out from under the car and flattens herself against the door. He can see her shins, and one hand with ruddy nails pressed into the moss as support. He thinks she’s gone out of her mind. Still, he doesn’t dare changing it from whatever the hell she’s planned.

The creature turns around.

Leon watches it go around the car, to the side where She is. To the side where she suddenly isn’t.

It is probably wrong to believe that there is always a limit of horror which the human mind can experience. Quite the opposite. It just digs in deeper and deeper, like a well that will never be filled no matter the flood. More, the water erodes the rocks the well is made of, and they fall one after the other in a way that isn’t immediately perceived with the naked eye,  but in a way that is instead felt. It’s like when you step out of your room, and it’s dark, it’s actually night, around two in the morning and you just know something is out there. You don’t know what it is, but the hair at the back of your neck prickles up, your eyes widen to try and see through the veil of black, and no matter what you force yourself to think - there’s nothing out there, it can’t get any worse - that feeling doesn’t go away until you’ve turned on the light. Horror birthes horror.

Her disappearance hasn’t relieved Leon of that unrelenting terror. It’s a problem after another. They add up in an eversinking pile that grows into the well. The rookie in his arms shakes, too violently. He must be terrified too - for his life, while Leon’s only intelligible thoughts are for the Woman. The rest of the hubbub is numbed by pain.

The creature makes a wheeze. It sounds like a horse pushing out an exhausted, perhaps annoyed breath, out, Leon can’t put his fingers on it. He’s never ridden a horse. What a stupid thing to think about at the moment. It brushes against the car, effectively shaking it, just a little, enough for them to notice the wheels hover from the moss (less than an inch). They fall back in a squeal. Leon uses the sound to draw in air.

It moves to the back of the car now. It inspects it much like it inspected the cop’s body. Mark’s eyes are closed now. It seems that he’s murmuring a prayer; lips moving, tears trickling down, silently. Leon doesn’t remember being so condemned, even in Raccoon.

The creature leaves.

Leon waits.

He waits a long time, looking out for a bristle in the ferns and biting his tongue. Finally he moves, first slowly taking his hand off Mark’s mouth, then shifting to exit the under of the car. _Stay here_ , he orders the rookie with a finger.

He doesn’t dare standing. He doesn’t trust his balance, or his sight for the matter. The fog is tightening around him. He catches himself on the mirror. A little too hard.

It springs at him like lightning, sweeping him off the ground and propelling him against the tree.

He hears screaming. He isn’t sure. There’s a screw of confusion bolting around in his brain, suffocating him. It’s all dark in the well, he can’t even see the light of day peeping from the top, so he holds on to the rocks, feeling around him for something that makes sense. A root. Another one, those are the roots of the tree, yes - then moss. Cold. It’s raining. He forgot. It slithers down his neck and his back, like he isn’t soaked enough. No, not water. He tries to move his hands up, to the bandage, and his head finally explodes.

It’s salvation.

Leon clings onto the agony to let out a first scream. Although, it can’t overcome the Woman’s.

“Wrong target, honey!”

It’s pitch black inside the well. Still, the red of a flame burns loud.

“That’s right, mama is here. And you haven’t been spanked in a while.”

She presses the trigger.

The two hundred grams of pure hatred and despair are thrown into the single bullet. More follow, aligning themselves in a dull sound in the armor-like scales. It loses its balance, more bullets firing into it as it stumbles backwards. It covers its ridiculous head, lets out a screech that has Leon scream and cover his ears from the horrible ringing, but he hopes…

It’s ignoring how capable It is to just hope blindly for a miracle. Leon had stopped hoping, had started drinking, and here he goes today going back to square one.

She flings herself to the side in an elegant semi-cartwheel when its whips lash at where she stood a millisecond ago. She shoots restlessly, ducking under what would have cut her in half, throws the gun to the side upon hearing the familiar click signaling defeat. In the same time, she takes hold of the crossbow, always at her hip.

Notch, draw, fire.

Leon realizes that it’d been an explosive arrow when his hearing comes back full force, forcefully blasting him back against the tree. He uses the bark to shield his skin from the sudden heat, panting before the brutal reminiscence of the car crash - of the car crashes, and Claire’s red ponytail head yelling behind the barrier of fire ( _I’ll be there!_ ).

The fog is dense when he gathers the strength to walk through it. There’s coughing. He limps to the sound, a hand like a visor as though it’ll help. It’s the rookie. He’s crawled out from under the car, he’s glazing at his surroundings, a look of shock plastered on his face.

And Leon just knows.

There’s a hissing, reminding Leon of an angry serpent. Short after a wet slap comes to slash at the charred air. Suffocating fish, with bulging eyes, the rookie’s jaw hangs. He coughs, once. Spurt of blood. Then, his head falls off.

The creatures lunges at the corpse, its inhumane lips closing around the horrible wound of the decapitated neck. It starts to suck on the spitting artery, much like a baby clinging eagerly onto the nipple of their mother and the milk overflows on her chest - a spring of white delicacy bringing nutriments of succulent use for the newborn’s health and growth. Now, the B.O.W’s disgusting pink and red dots of raw flesh going into hiding underneath the healing scales. The side of what you could call its face grows a new eye in replacement of its exploded one. Leon can’t tear away from the scene. His stomach lurches.

She’s suddenly in front of him, exhaling burnt pig and perturbed collectedness.

_We have to go._

The horrible sounds of the feast - slurping and gulping and sucking - haunt his mind as they get in the car. She turns on the engine, grimacing a little at the loud whirring. Leon sinks in his seat. His head throbs. He holds on to consciousness as long as he can, while echoes the creature’s scream until they reach the first trees of the dying horizon. The woman doesn’t stop pressing the gas.


	8. Home Sick

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.  
> I realize just now that I don't know shit about the USA's geography and even though that shouldn't matter irl, it does in this fic. Let's just pretend Washington DC is actually in the north west of that continent-country, okay? I can get a pass, since Capcom themselves fuck their geography up all the time.

She wakes him. Whether it is by her presence, or the lack of thereof, she always wakes him. Every time so far had been with a gasp. This time, it’s with soft lips on his forehead.

“Welcome back, stranger.”

She sounds rested. Leon hears the smile, everything but faint. It glitters like tingles on his skin. He cracks his eyes to gaze at her through the light of dawn peeping by the curtains. Fails to understand his past anger, for the sight has blinded him. Sitting on the side of the bed next to his hip, she watches over him with sun kissing the side of her face.

He’s lighter.

“You’re healed.” she tells him. In response, his fingers shoot up to the back of his head. She’s right. No bandages. The woman’s always been awful at patching people up. “She did a pretty good job. More than I ever did.”

He licks his lips, nervously.

“She?”

  


He’s lighter, light-headed. No heartache.

He grazes on the wallpapers, and it seems bizarre when it doesn’t cut. There’s no burden, scratches of ghosts’ nails within the bricks. The lights aren’t turned on but that’s because the curtains are wide open, and the colors are bright, free pink and blue, green plants mixing in a feminine and very much Claire way. Claire owns a large house, too big for herself, big enough for her many hosts. It's often foreigners, coming to study abroad, and it's often people in need, coming to seek shelter. She is the personification of faith, in Leon’s mind. Faith in others, faith that others put in her. And she never runs away.

Leon hasn't realized how homesick of Claire he's been.

She's in the garage, in her overused sneakers and the jeans shorts, ponytail slapping the wind with the breezes escaping through the rolled up shutter. She turns around upon hearing Leon knock on the open door, just out of politeness, and a bit of shyness too. Apprehension, maybe. He hasn’t seen her in a while. He knows he should’ve called, asked about the weather, or her brother. Maybe he should stop being such an asocial - no, a _coward_ , when he tries so hard to look strong.

Claire smiles wide.

“It’s good to see you, officer.”

Then she gives a scoff, and opens her arms, big enough to fit a whole family.

“C’mon, get in there Leon!”

She holds him. They sway a little. It’s funny, she has to stand on her toes for her chin to rest on his shoulder. She smells of bike oil and grease, and her hands slip on his shirt. With a gasp, Claire suddenly steps aside, grimacing when she wipes her gloves on her forearms.

“G’dammit, sorry - totally forgot, I’m lubricating my baby. Christ that sounded better in my head.”

Leon laughs freely. “It’s alright, I’ll just have to steal from your brother’s shirt collection.”

Her mouth twitches. “Oh, I’m sure he’ll be delighted!” She pats him on the arm, eyes glowing. “So, how’s that head?”

He rubs the back of his head in a way that he knows will become an habit, just like the head tilt had grown to be after too many glasses a weekend, then a weekday.

“Like it was never split in half,” he says, “thank you.”

“Thank Ada. She brought you here in one piece, after all. Didn’t spit out what the hell happened to you two, though.”

“She’s…” he begins. He doesn’t finish.

Claire pulls on her gloves and unceremoniously flings them on top of the washing machine already filled to the rim. Leon flops down, back against her bike.

“A handful?” she guesses, joining him. He stays unreadable. “She saved your life again. As long as she isn’t handing us to evil corporations, I’m cool with her. Are you cool with her?”

Leon honestly has no fucking clue. “I have no fucking clue.” he says.

Claire nods, unshakable. “Okay. Well, you’ll figure it out. It’s not like you have a choice,” and he chuckles darkly, “but you will. I know you will.”

They fall into a comfortable silence, during which Leon has the time to absorb the unwavering strength of her trust and turn it around so it’s become his. He realizes that he needed this: to sit still next to Claire, and bicker, like they’re twenty all over again. He begs for normality.

Unfortunately, he’s part of the nighttime creatures now.

Claire studies him. “Whatever you’re running from… it’s become our business since Ada dragged you to my front door. Wait, screw that. It’s become our business since it’s become your business. So, tell me. What is it? Who’s the giant asshole we gotta take down now?”

Leon smiles low. He remembers: “It’s up to us to take them down, isn’t it.”

“You said it so yourself. You hate them as much as I do.”

“But that’s the thing… I don’t know what _them_ is. If it’s… an Umbrella wannabe, or another freaked psycho… They sent a bioweapon after us, Claire, out in the open, in the goddamn States, they’re not being exactly discreet. They know what they’re doing.”

Claire looks out the opening of the garage, then to the door, ajar, that leads to the kitchen. She inches closer. “Was she with them?” she asks quietly.

Leon would have ripped his own hair off if it wasn’t for her calm. She isn’t this calm, usually, always ready for action, but he suspects she knows that he’s already on edge. So she isn’t taking up space, just enough to let him know she’s here.

“I can’t say.” he replies, gazing into the distance. “She got shot by them. At least she claims she has. And I saw her kill two men who used to work for them.”

“She’s on a revenge quest or something?”

“Looks like it. Doesn’t explain why she won’t say what we’re up against.”

“You know her better than me.” And Claire gives a slow smirk, and he feels her nudge him in the ribs. God, he can just feel the embarrassment rap its knuckles. “Maybe a little too much, amiright?” Yep, embarrassment even knocked down the door.

Leon rolls his eyes to his bare feet, and they stay there. He’s too optimistic if he thinks she’s going to let go so easily.

“When I was little, before our parents died... dad used to take my brother hunting with him.” Claire says, with the slow tone of a storyteller. “I was too young to shoot but Chris wasn’t - plus dad said that the earlier he learned, the earlier he could protect us. From what, I never figured that out. Mom didn’t want to see Chris with a gun. She got pissed, she yelled at dad until they were gone, and I waited until they were back so I could ask how it went, if they killed anything. If we were going to eat it at dinner - I was a weird kid, okay?”

“I feel like you’re getting somewhere.”

“I am.” She clears her throat, huffs to the ceiling. “So I kept harassing Chris with the questions, like really asking for the details and the gore, but he never said anything. He always refused to tell me about the squirrels dad made him shoot. And, one day, I was about eight, and he was what, twelve? no, eleven. I just… I took dad’s gun and I went into the woods. I had to see for myself what it was like.”

“You shot a squirrel?”

“I did. Felt so bad I cried, refused to eat anything for days… But it was the first and the last time that I killed a living thing. I don’t know if that’s what guilt-tripped me into becoming a pacifist, but that’s not the point - the point is, I went to see for myself.”

Leon’s eyes are still on his feet, but his mouth quirks. “You’re telling me I should dive in head first into a nightmares-clad situation just to get answers?”

Claire gives a pout. “Yeah, basically. Nicely put!”

“You’re great help, Claire.”

“I know you’re being honest. Anytime, Leon.”

He swallows, and once more they fall into the quiet. She fixes her ponytail, bringing two strands behind her ears in annoyance. She sees him stare, and gives a quick smile before getting up to drown her greasy arms in the cracked sink halfway between the washing machine and the line. She’s the exact opposite of the Woman, with emotions worn on sleeves. Logically, in every possible alternate dimension, timeline, call it what you want, life... Claire should have been the one he fell in love with.

She comes back in front of him, rubbing a towel.

“So, what now for Leon Scott Kennedy, DSO’s best agent and the president’s unofficial bodyguard?”

“For one, I’m none of the two anymore.” he says, warning her with a finger raised. “For two… I’m gonna fight. Story of my life.”

Claire swings the towel over her shoulder. “Yeah, before that, you should probably talk to her. She’d be a great asset in this fight. And I’m not saying this because you want to be in her pants, Jesus, men…”

“Say what?”

“You didn’t say, you _looked_. I’d recognize that look in fucking pitch black.”

Leon snorts. “Just say you wanna be my wingman.”

“Wingwoman. This is my house and we support equality.”

He extends a leg to kick at her shoe but she leaps to the side, shaking the towel in front of his face in a taunt.

Screech of tyres against the asphalt.

Watching the newcomers park on the lawn, Leon slowly gets on his feet. Claire takes his side. She crosses her arms in a respect-worthy impression of a disappointed mother. For his part, Leon does his best not to look like a supportive patriarch. _It’s my role_ , he told himself, _Claire and I are the only family she’s got left_. Twenty years later and he can feel himself smoothly slide his way back into the protective figure.

Sherry hops down the bike first, pulling the helmet off her short blond locks. An enormous grin ravages her young face.

“Finally” Claire breathes out. Sherry’s grin is contagious.

The girl throws herself to Leon’s arms. Taken aback, he staggers, to finally hug her back, tightly.

“We came as soon as Claire said you were here.” She scrambles away from his chest, looks up to him with eyebrows knitted together. “I’m sorry, Leon. Looks like you could’ve used some backup out there. What happened?”

Leon dismisses his head injury. “Some kind of fucked up mutation of a bat. We burned its head off. When we lost it, it was practically deaf.”

“Good to know.” she smiles. She looks like she is dying to give in to another hug, so she turns to Claire and kisses her. They exchange the usual familiarities. Leon has the brutal callback to a ten inch tall Sherry wrapped around the legs of a nineteen-year-old Claire. “How are you doing?... Oh yes I’m fine, it went well... yes, we got lucky... Jake knew better than to drive through Maryland… Jake?”

Jake Muller walks in the garage, six feet of tense nerves and balling fists. He greets the veterans with a sharp nod.

“ ‘Sup.”

Claire crosses her arms again and shoots him the parody of a glare.

“Thanks for bringing her here, Muller.”

“Anything for m’ladies. Which way’s the _aperitivo_?”

“Where’s your invitation?” Claire cackles, but there’s no malice in her voice.

Sherry rolls her eyes with a certain expertise (Leon glows with pride). “Guys, it’s ten.”

Jake passes by Leon with a wide smirk that doesn’t show his teeth. “Where’s my morning cocoa then?”

Sherry hurriedly shuffles in his wake. “You’re such a kid-!”

Holding back a snort, Leon turns to Claire who seems to be battling between disappointment and fondness. The latest wins. She smiles up to Leon, adjusting the necklace carefully settled between her breasts.

“We never really had the chance to discuss it, but… she grew up so beautifully, hasn’t she?”

Throat tightening, all Leon can do is nod. “She’s older than us when we got messed up. Can’t believe she isn’t messed up.”

“I can.” Claire says fiercely. “She got the best of role models. C’mon. I don’t want Jake rummaging through my breakfast cupboard.”

  


There had been a picture on the mantelshelf at home, back before his father had sold the house and they had been forced to move into a crappy cinder block with three rooms, two of them being bedrooms. In that picture, the three had been posing, two blonds and one brunet. His mother’s arms were coiled in a hook around his father’s, her other hand luring the kid to the folds of her skirt. And Leon, proudly showing off two missing front teeth, had been beaming.

He doesn’t know what had become of the photo after the car crash. He only collects memories of the memory, fragments of pieces slowly eaten away by time. So long after the incident and he thought he had forgotten.

Staring around Claire Redfield’s sunny house, Leon recalls of a time where the dead had been down and mom and dad were still waking him up, for school. He has to dig to reach for it, but it’s there, unburied by the crumbling well when he thought it’d been gone for good. He found them. God, he finally found them.

Sherry is sitting on the armrest of the couch. She’s currently pushing Jake’s legs to make herself more space for another buttcheek; sprawled over, her boyfriend doesn’t indicate the slightest interest in moving. Even better: he sticks his tongue out, ends up yelping when she sits on his stomach. The television buzzes some breaking news about a forest fire in the Canadian border, with a patrol guard in a critical situation, before Jake angrily smacks the remote and the news switch to a critique of the latest speech of the President. Claire sticks her head out from a low cupboard and triumphantly sets the chosen tea set on the coffee table. Leon walks in the painting, completing it. No. A certain color is missing. Claire brushes past him, promising to come back with tea. He takes advantage of the racket the young adults are making to follow Claire to the kitchen. He squeezes his hand around her bicep.

“You seen Ada?” he asks quietly, almost in a murmur.

She shakes her head. “I don’t think she’s come down yet.”

“I’ll go get her.”

“Okay.”

He goes up the stairs, knocks on the door where he woke up.

“Ada?” he calls out, no answer. He slides in the bedroom to nothing. “Hate it when she does that. Ada?”

“In the library, Leon.”

He trails her voice to a door. It’s ajar, open invitation for him to take - he pushes through.

The Woman is facing the bookshelves, showing off the delicate white marble of her bare back to Leon. He stares until she turns around, shutting the book in her fingers. He reads the title in a brisk.

 _Les Fleurs du Mal_.

Somehow, he’s got the feeling that this is just another setup.

Leon licks his lips.

“You comin’ down?”

She’s changed into a new dress, one he has never seen before. It’s obviously red, but a darker one, much like wine spilled on a carpet. He can see the side of the cups of her bra and a toned thigh revealed by a split. For a second his natural questioning of everything takes over him, wondering where the dress comes from, Claire’s closet? Did she have the time to do some shopping while he was knocked cold - but then his primal brain jumps the gun, and Leon is left staring like a goddamn fool.

Jesus, why does she have to be so perfect?

“I heard noise. New visitors?”

Her voice breaks him out of his reverie. It makes his skin prickle like a surge of electricity. Remember the two men she killed, he tells himself, and the many more before that.

Leon licks his lips again.

“Jake Muller and Sherry Birkin. They’re coming to help.”

“Oh.” she does, feigning disinterest. “Congratulations. Your plan is working.”

“My plan?”

“To gather the walking dead, all in one same place.”

“Now that you mention it, your name is part of that deadpool too, so… mind comin’ down?”

She sighs, loud and clear. Leon tries hard not to seem content.

“That’s just stalling.” he mocks. You’re better than that.”

She smiles, and for once, it reaches her eyes.

“You still hold me in high regards.” she murmurs. “Alright. Lead the way.”

When he closes the door behind them, he brushes a hand down her back. Just in case.

  


The Woman becomes the Queen of fucking England when she reads.

She licks her forefinger, pressing it against the paper, wetting the corner before turning her attention to another page. She sips on her tea with the pinky raised to the ceiling. He can’t figure out if she’s showing off, messing with him or just being herself for once. Who is he kidding. It’s obviously deliberate.

“Can you tell us what we’re working up against? At least the number of men involved?”

From his position on the chair, Leon watches as her eyes freeze to a sentence at the fifth question Claire has asked her so far, each one met with a cryptic answer. She slowly looks up to four annoyed pair of eyes.

She pouts.

“Roughly a country.”

“A number.”

“Three hundred thirty million? Deepest apologies, it’s hard to keep track...”

“You know that’s impossible, right.”

“That’s what we all thought in 1998 - and look where we are now...”

Jake rises up. He brandishes a fist that the woman barely glances at, unbothered.

“If the bitch don’t talk, I’m out the door. I didn’t come here to fight a fucking ghost.”

“Hey.” Sherry tugs him down, back onto the couch. “We’re in this together, so take it easy, will you?”

“I’ll take it easy when Mrs Smith stops being a cunt!”

“Jake -!” Sherry yelps, shocked.

“Muller, you shut your mouth -” Leon barks.

“You sit your damn ass on my couch and remember that this is my house -” Claire snarls.

And Jake to straighten like a string or a nerve stretched out to its limits: “For fuck’s sake - she’s toying with you idiots, clear as day! Ask her how her morning shit went and she’ll find a way to drop it on your head and convince you that it was a fucking pigeon when we’re indoors!”

Leon shoots up with gritted teeth. “Don’t talk about what you don’t know, Muller!”

“What I don’t know?” the mercenary laughs humorlessly. “I promised to keep my mouth shut about her wearing the same face as the bitch who had me and Sherry locked up for a whole ass six months, but sure, there’s no correlation, she’s an entirely different person and we should totally believe in whatever _doesn’t_ come out of her hole.”

Leon witnesses Sherry wince. “It’s not said in the most elegant way, but… Jake’s got a point.”

“Oh, he does?” Leon snaps. Sherry’s blue baby eyes widen and he instantly regrets it.

Jake would step on the coffee table if he could. “I do, _hero_ . And you know what? Forget what I said, I’m done waitin’ around for you fucks to break out the news when they’ve got us kidnapped, _again_ . I want answers. Starting with - _who the shit is she_?”

The living-room is quiet. Far away, the incessant ticking of a grandma clock. A phone buzzes. No one picks up.

They need help. That’s why they’re here. They need saving, they need to save, the three people in this room and themselves, that’s what it is all about. That is why the Woman is sitting in the middle of the couch, answering questions in a voice that is both bored and teasing. That is why Leon sits on the chair by her side, not touching her, just looking, when everyone else faces her on the other couch. He knows from experience that she is itching to start the fight. It’s her way to introduce a discussion. She hasn’t said hello yet.

So Leon knows that it’s up to him.

“She’s a spy that worked for some rival company of Umbrella.” he answers matter-of-factly when there’s heavy in his throat. “Probably a bunch of other terrorist organizations too. She’s lone now, my guess is that it’s been a while.”

She brings her tea to her lips, blows softly.

“She…” And he has to breathe out for a second. He’s always kept it from his employees. “We met at Raccoon, and again when I was dispatched in Spain for the disappearance of the President’s daughter. A bunch of times after. Her mission always is to steal samples of the viruses she encounters, sell them at a high price. So yeah,” and he makes her eyes meet his, roughly, with the intent to cause pain, “she’s the one responsible for today’s situation.”

The disappointment is audible.

The Woman turns a page.

“Okay.” Jake nods. “So why isn’t she dead already?”

“She’s a key witness.” Claire says softly. “And a damn good survivor. She knows the tricks of the job and the higher-ups. We won’t survive if we don’t let her in.”

“We won’t survive if she stabs us in the back!”

“Don’t worry.”

 _She_ has spoken up, startling everyone. She sets her teacup on the table, nonchalantly. Her hand goes up to brush that black strand behind her ear. Leon shivers.

“Whoever gets in my way, accidentally, deliberately, doesn’t make it out unscarred. If that happens to be a former ally... so be it.”

A pause.

Leon seizes her arm.

In barely a second she’s in the hall with him, inches apart, one with a content satisfaction and the other with a restrained anger. In the living-room, chaos steals their seats.

“What the hell is going on?”

“He’s a kid. Kids have to lay off some steam.”

“I’m talking about you. Fuck -” and he slaps two hands on his face, concealing his broken eyes and this wince. “Can’t you just… be normal?”

“ _Normal_ .” she echoes. It sounds sour and bitter. “ _You_ , want _me_ , to be _normal_. Normal like little Sherry Birkin? Normal like Claire Redfield? No, Leon. If you really wanted me to be normal you wouldn’t have fucked me in this hotel room five years ago.”

The wince tugs at his lips like a child begging for candy at a sleeve. Leon senses the familiar tingling of tension behind his eyes, and so he pulls back on his hair until it’s slick with sweat against his skull.

“Why are you still here, Ada?”

“Do I look like I owe you an answer?”

_in her case, he always had to repeat twice for it to sink_

“You know, maybe you’re the one with the broken heart and I’m not. Pretending I’m the one that’s drowning. What a cowardly way to make yourself feel stronger.”

“Sure. Fade yourself into the role of the martyr. Suits you.”

“You know, I’ve always stood up for you when people called you a bitch, but you really deserve that title.”

The punch comes, fast.

She looks shocked when she glances down at her hand.

Leon leans back against the handrail of the stairs and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Wow.” he does, not looking at her. “Really didn’t see that one coming.”

Her eyes are blazing wet.

“What, no quick retort? You outta words?”

She chews on her tongue. It seems to hurt. Good. His nose is fucking destroyed all over again.

“I -”

A pause.

She doesn’t stagger, usually. Ever.

Lowering his hand, Leon looks down at her, all traces of resentment gone. She’s already recollected. He didn’t even have the time to blink.

“You’re safe here.” she says. “Stay. Heal.”

The breath that he pulls into his lungs is shaky, pain of his nose forgotten. It’s a spasm that makes him reach out for her. She escapes, with grace.

“Where are you going.” Leon calls after her.

“Where you can’t follow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Ada's new outfit, think of a mix between her RE2Make cocktail dress and the butterfly one from RE4.
> 
> PS: Plz notice how I never call Ada by her name...


	9. Home Sweet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah. That 'Eventual Smut' tag I put exists for a reason.
> 
> PS: thank you sm for those comments!! I always grin so hard when I receive them and tbh they make me writer faster lol

"Where're your bike keys."

“Jesus, what happened to your-”

“Claire.”

“...inside pocket of my leather jacket. Do you need us?”

“I gotta take care of it.”

“Okay. Then take the talkie.”

“Thanks.”

“Leon.”

“I know.”

“No you don’t. Leon, _give her hell_.”

 

* * *

 

The first time she had been punished by the carer, she had cried. So he had slapped her again, and she never cried again. He had hit her for the bunny, remember? The white rabbit with its red eyes, and the blood maculating its fur as she had cut its ears off. Many other victims followed along the lessons, years of them; they’d gotten bigger and larger, from dog to man.

Patricio Castel had been the bunny. There’d been many rats before him, all feeding off the poison in her open hand. They are always blinded by her aura, this untouchable spark of fire that some call venom, others, freedom. They believed naively that she’d visited them over the pretext of business around a cup of tea. She likes tea. She enjoys vengeance more.

Slipping black gloves on, the Woman pulls the rifle parts out of the case. She assembles them with a mechanical expertise. If you inch closer, and if you force her eyes to look to the sun, surely you can see that her face is a white board. A hand has erased all the emotions, leaving smears of what used to be good behind. She fixes the scope on and settles the bipod on the bodyguard of the rooftop, hits her shoulder with the recoil pad, advances her eye to the lens.

There.

The ajar window is slightly foggy, dense condensation slipping out into the atmosphere above the building. She turns on the thermal scope. Amongst all the red, there’s a burning stain right in the middle, bathing behind another panel of glass: a shower. She bites in a smirk. The prude nurse is finally showing off some skin. Funny, the Woman has always been thinking that she’d go so far as washing herself in a swimming suit. Ah, well, her fault for such a sin.

She swiftly slips on a silencer before chambing a round.

 

* * *

 

 

Thirty minutes in.

Leon speeds past the cars, passing green and red lights all the same. Far behind are stretching the suburbs with Claire’s house, ahead awaits the metropolitan districts and its buildings rising high, though always shorter than the ones in DC. Traffic jams are starting to get alit, but Leon breaks through them, attracting a tempest of honks and slurs.

“ _Well, if it isn’t the bitch in the red dress_.”

He slams on the brakes.

The truck blares, cutting his way short. The asphalt shakes under Leon’s foot when he sets one down. He tries to steady himself.

He brings the talkie to his mouth.

“Take a left turn. She’s close.” Claire replies.

 

* * *

 

Her finger is trembling on the trigger. She raises it to her face and shakes it violently, as though the unexplained turmoil of emotions will permanently still. With a huff, she brings her eye back to the scope. She grits her teeth when she finds that the nurse isn’t in the shower any longer. It’s okay, she finds her again, looking out her bedroom window, tits dangling when she goes to pull the curtain; she doesn’t accomplish her objective and instead raises her eyes above the Woman who is taking aim at her, too far away to be detected, and _gasps_.

A hiss.

Every muscle in the Woman’s body tenses up. For a second, she loses the ability to tremble as all her nerves are paralyzed (Warning: High Voltage, Keep Clear) and she swears loudly. She shoots. The bullet breaks the window and goes to meet a lamp, leaving the nurse unharmed.

“Shit -” the Woman pants, blindly trying to take aim again… “shit, shit, sh-”

A shadow shields her from the scene and she looks up just in time to land on her back and block the hit with the sniper rifle.

She grits her teeth.

“My bad, honey. I should’ve made sure you were dead before I fled the scene.”

The Erynie opens a bottomless maw and shrieks.

* * *

 

 

The hiss resonates in Leon’s ears even long after it has evaporated with the grumble of the traffic. He intensifies the pressure on the gas.

 _Faster_ , he thinks. _Faster_.

He thinks about her lips on his jaw and her fist on his mouth.

 

* * *

 

Dodging the hits is no problem. Escaping the creature for good is one.

The sniper rifle is useless at point blank range. She drops it off, runs to the edge of the roof and jumps. She painfully lands on the other one and takes off immediately.

 _The Stash_.

She has a chance to get there before the Erinye tears her up. A slim chance, but a chance nonetheless - and she isn’t ready to give up on the nurse’s death so soon. It’s a process that’s more than twenty years in the making. The lady surely can wait an hour more.

She takes a run up and springs to another rooftop. This one is way farther than the latest was, and her fingers hook the railing. A chill shakes her when they slip, almost, before she brings her other hand up, her well-defined biceps sheened with sweat as she works herself up.

A series of deafening hisses blows up behind her. She sprints again like she’d been kicked in the ass, not keen on turning around and wasting a precious second on figuring out how far away the Erinye is. The question finds an answer when, once again, an eclipse falls down on her. The creature had jumped too, but higher, using its wings in which holes shone to try and pin her down. But the Woman skids to a halt. It passes over her in a shriek of disappointment. Its long tail slaps at her back. For a second she thinks that she’s going to be thrown off the building to meet the asphalt a good six floors down. She’s thrust down and bites the dust. Her teeth slam painfully against each other. Her back burns. But she doesn’t fall.

Heart pounding, the Woman rolls on her stomach and runs off.

The Stash. The Stash is her last hope.

 

* * *

 

“Leon, I think she’s on the roofs.”

Claire’s voice crackles in the receiver and puts Leon’s shock on hold. Sticking the talkie to his mouth, he makes the bike scream.

“You don’t say?”

All around, windows close and local residents open their doors to panicked strangers on the streets - for they are all looking up in astonishment, where every two beats, the edge of a black wing masks the sunlight from Leon’s eyes. She’s on the roofs - wrong. _They’re_ on the roofs, the Woman and that creature that he thought they had killed. You should’ve known better, Leon, than to trust a bioweapon to stay dead. Its wrathful hisses split the air apart and add to the panic of the city. He’s struck with the sudden memory of Raccoon, and that Tyrant that pursued them everywhere they went, Claire and him. How did they kill it again?

“How in the hell do I go up?” he yells, disconcerted.

“Emergency staircase?” Claire suggests, and he follows, hoping to find the Woman in one piece.

 

* * *

 

She regrets wearing that dress when a new, fresh whip bites at her back.

The thing is still hissing, its small, bloodshot eyes riveted on her, the vengeful, deafening fury like the voices of hell in broad daylight; somehow more terrifying than if she’d been in the moving dark. Because this time there’s witnesses, and civilian casualties, which could result in a trial prior her ass on a cold, metal, electric chair. The Woman doesn’t know what is worse between a public execution and a lonely death. It doesn’t matter, she tells herself, because she’s going to live the fuck out of life if - no, _when_ she gets rid of this fucker.

Another whip swirls around her ankle, yanks her down.

“Don’t even try -” she growls, kicking at the tail as it slowly quarters her. Having had enough, she pulls the dagger from her waist and slashes her restraint. The Erinye’s pain is music to her ears. In response, it attacks again, whipping at her frantically and she raises her arms to her face in a poor attempt at shielding. “ _Shit!”_

She cries every time she’s flogged, hating her incapacity to move and to defend herself if not for the tiny dagger in her fist. She swings left and right, hoping to hit something of importance when she finally does. The blade rams down the side of its face into its ear. The Erinye withdraws with a terrible scream. The giant wings leave the Woman’s sides and she can breathe again, taking in a huge gulp of cold air that’s hope to her soul.

 _The Stash_.

The building is near, so near.

 

Why did she hit him? Why did she take off, when he had needed her most?

 _He shouldn’t have called me a bitch_.

And she shouldn’t have closed herself off in her own private world made out of dolls with masks and bittersweet revenge. She’d broken herself, and in the same time, she’d broken her promise. _Even death can’t keep us apart_ , but apparently, life is the only thing that can. God, she regrets. _God, I regret!_

 

_(Where’s Leon when I need him?)_

 

She closes the distance in a stride. The window explodes upon the contact. She absorbs the shock in a roll, feeling no pain at all anymore. The ex-accounts department has been shut down ever since she’s known about it, and Wesker had told her that this was one of their many weaponry hideouts, all spread internationally. Then Wesker had died, and she had gladly self-assigned the many stashes. Of course, slightly transforming it into something that was more her style.

Any second now, the Erinye is going to come to its senses and look for her. She has to be fast.

The Woman pulls a drawer open with enough strength to tear it off the desk. Letting go of the broken drawer, she stretches an arm inside the hole and pushes the button. Instantly, the wall in front of her slides effortlessly, giving way to a piercing white room.

She stumbles inside and puts her hand on her crossbow, and arrows, and her Beretta she slides to the holster under her arm.

 

* * *

 

 

Leon stumbles inside, sees the startled look on her face as she vaults from a white room in the wall, as she half-raises the crossbow and then lowers it again. A flash of guilt mixed with horror this time she can’t hide.

A moment that lasts an infinity, during which neither of them speaks, staring at each other while everywhere police sirens flare up. Leon can see her struggling to find an explanation, an excuse perhaps, another lie. He isn’t in the mood.

“Where are you going?” he asks again, anger seeping out of his voice along with a snarl at the corner of his lips.

Her shoulders sag. “I really don’t think now’s the time -”

What was left of the window after her intrusion is blown up. His instincts kick in and he knocks a desk over, falling to his knees behind it while the Woman presses herself against the shelves of the white room. The snaking tail sweeps the room, sending the décor flying like cannonballs. Leon holds on to the feet of the desk, going through the tremors with it but never letting his stare off the Woman. She presses a finger over her mouth.

 _Wait it out_.

Leon doesn’t want to ‘wait it out’. No he wants to fucking press her against the wall and snatch the truth out of her. Even then he manages to reach deep inside of himself to tug out enough of a dose of patience so that he stays off the thing’s radar.

The creature breathes out loudly, a low growl that has Leon’s insides squirm uncomfortably. There’s nothing else to do but wait, on all fours, Her frame the only thing he can see - she’s working with a Desert Eagle, inserting the bullets one by one in a chamber with a slowness that is mismatched by the shaking of her hands.

She’s scared, he realizes, and somehow his anger gives a little.

Eyebrows a thin line, she looks down to him.

_Ready?_

Leon sharply tilts his head to the side.

_As I’ll ever be._

She throws him the Magnum and the whistling it makes as it twirls, combined with the noise when he springs up, are enough for the beast to slash the air with its cutting tail. It strikes Leon in the chest, his fingers brushing at the weapon from mere inches. His lungs are brutally emptied when his back meets the wall, shaking the whole building. Clutching his chest, he coughs painfully…

… and he sees the beast, in all its mighty width and distorted limbs, a bald, shiny light grey head turning over to him and opening a blood-sucking hole wide enough to scream in his face with enough strength to burst his eardrums if he hadn’t covered his ears...

… and the Woman leaps in front of them, back to the thing as its tails slams down him. He sees her look of unshakeable determination - and then she’s hit and Leon cries out in shock and surprise. He wraps his bulk around the Woman, her safety only in mind. He turns her around. He groans out his pain when he’s hit too, long slashes tearing his shirt and leaving burn marks at his skin.

His fingers are hot against her back. Her blood simmers under his nails. His rage flares up again - at the monster for injuring her, at herself for taking the hit for him, at himself for allowing that to happen.

“What the fuck were you thinking-??”

“Mind running, will you?” she barks, uncoiling herself from him, as usual, as always, never giving a solution to his problems. Sure, let’s flee and never mention that episode again.

The monster lunges, Leon’s already rolled away, one hand grabbing the Magnum and the other locked with the Woman’s who tugs him up. The size of its wings incapacitates it. That should give them a bit of a head start.

They run messily, tumbling down a flight of stairs, and another. Sometimes they look over their shoulder and they stop to listen, breathing hard with the nose to make the less noise possible. He realizes when they’ve descended three floors that they hadn’t let go of each other. An oxymoron of feelings catch up to him - disgust and relief, a little plus of anger but a persistent comfort and _want_. Leon looks at them, and snaps.

Squeezing her hand so hard it has to bruise, he shoves her in the darkness of a cabinet and closes the door behind them. She immediately crosses her arms under her chest. Closing off again? It’s starting to get predictable. No. _Annoying_.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a wild B.O.W after us-”

And he inches so fast, so close to her that she swears she can see the remnants of the Plaga inside him and feel his fist closing around her throat.

“What do you get at the end of all that, huh?! A bank account in Switzerland, the end of the world and our blood on your hands? You’re selling away parasites, killing random people around the globe, destroying our life and all for that sake of companies greater than even Umbrella - have you ever cared about the repercussions? China happened because you decided to flirt with a psychopath, Kijuju, because you brought Saddler’s sample to Wesker, and who’s to say you’re not the start of all the shit that happened after Raccoon City, huh?!”

“That’s the problem with you, Leon. You’re so blue you can’t understand why people go grey.”

He’s scaring her, Leon realizes. Hell, he’s scaring himself, he’s scared of her, because he’s _scared_. Terrified of never knowing, never seeing what’s right in front of his nose. Her true colors.

But something at the back of his mind… his never dying empathy… or is it compassion? He has never been one with words. So yes, he’s afraid, but most of all he’s afraid of understanding her. Because the day he will… it means he’ll accept all the shit she’s pulled. And the Woman is bleeding.

“You’re bleeding.” he says. On instinct, his hand shoots up to her shoulder, where her blood is splattered from the slashes on her back.

“Yes.” she replies tit for tat, defiantly scanning his face in the dim light. “I always pay my debts.”

Wrong answer. Leon’s eyes narrow between the small space between them. “So that’s what it was? Taking the hit because you _owed me_?!”

_BAM!_

They both can’t help but scream loud when the whip tears the door in two. The second later, the eye of the creature is pressed against the wide scar, the blood-shot retina, pulsing with evil, is focused on him, the pupil enlarging with hunger, and teeth, a famished mouth, devouring hole…

Very annoyed, Leon raises the Desert Eagle.

“Fuck off.”

The shot rips the jaw off clean. Clean is an adjective that is here misused; the winged demon is hurled backwards like snatched by a tornado, wings tangling jerkily, but still, they have the time to appreciate the gore of the tongue hanging by threads of blotchy red flesh, and a set of upper teeth, black incisors apart enough to show off the gap of the naked throat. It pulsates with a shriek that ends trashing against the wall of the corridor.

The Woman’s looking at him. He’s known her to be an expert at keeping her expressions neutral. Now is not the case. Years of training, thrown out the window, with a bang.

 _Let’s go_ , he says with his eyes while hers are imploring for something else.

Leon’s hand brushes at her back as he knocks the remnants of the door down, Magnum first in the corridor. A painful moan echoes up somewhere. They don’t wait around to find out what state the creature is in.

“You don’t take a hit for me, _I_ take a hit for _you_!” Leon says, running down the stairs so fast he could easily break his neck.

“Since when is that the case?” she snarls back. She’s trailing behind, clearly tired, so Leon yanks her hand to him. “What, Officer, you’re too manly to try out a role-reversal?”

“ _Come on_.”

“Oh, now you want to run? That’s funny.”

“Fuck.” Leon replies, almost missing a step as the Woman looks up, to the staircase above their heads. “Fuck!” he adds when he too hears the loud destruction above, like a madman repeatedly throwing himself head first into concrete.

“She’s angry now.”

“No shit!”

He can’t believe the time it takes them to finally reach the first floor. At least they’ve reached a destination, and he breathes out for a second when his feet meet the solid ground of the pavement. Her little gasp of surprise upon seeing the street makes him reconsider his relief. She concentrates on a figure, making her way into the swarm outside. _Is that…?_

Leon doesn’t think twice and closes the double doors in front of the half a dozen police cars.

“Gotta give it to them,” the Woman says, holding her shoulder with a hand and panting, “they’re quick to react.”

Leon nods. He moves to work the bolt. “They’ve reinforced the security since Raccoon. Wonder why.” He avoids her gaze very pointedly.

Her head snaps to him. “So it wasn’t just words.”

He doesn’t reply. They go back to sprinting.

 _That’s a big building_ , Leon thinks fleetingly. Lucky them. They would be able to hide among the disused labyrinth if it isn’t for what they hold each other accountable for.

“I refuse to think that you, Leon Scott Kennedy, believe that I somehow gave birth to the terrorist America!”

“Well one of your identities was the founder of Neo-Umbrella, so I don’t think I’m stretching the truth that much!”

“And say I thought you had more brains than brawns!”

“Who is it then, huh? It’s not Umbrella, it’s not Wesker, it’s not Simmons or Birkin… if it’s not you, who is it?!”

“The world is full of secrets, Leon, and this is not the first to escape you!”

“Locked door,” he groans, shaking the handle. “You know, you’re not even trying to make yourself look good.”

“Since your mind looks set, why bother?” she replies, going for a window. “Police on this side too.”

“There’s a back alley?”

“Yes.” She dives for the emergency exit, the sign dead above the opening. Her shoulder rams painfully against it. “ _Ugh_!”

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Leon snarls, moving her aside. He starts to push on the door, first shoulder, then leg, kicking at it forcefully.

“Funny how you care through the accusations.”

He snorts, giving up no retort. The door gives in and he falls with it. She hoists him up with one gloved hand.

“I’ve got an accusation too,” she says in a purr despite their breathlessness. “How did you find me?”

He glares at her. “Tracker.” She blinks. He pats at her shoulder again, offering her a cocky smile. “You’re not the only one with gadgets up your sleeve.” He wiggles his fingers at her. She finds the tiny red glowing device that used to be in the small of back.

So. She’d been played like an amateur.

She finds that she actually doesn’t mind losing. At least, not with him.

Thankfully for them, the parking is devoid of cops.

Then the sun is eclipsed. The tyres of a car squeal and the metal of its roof bends under the immense weight of the Erinye that just fell on top of it. Any thought of a potential breakfast that Leon could have had evaporates from his mind when he sees its injuries, dark blood oozing from what used to be an eye socket thanks to his Desert Eagle.

“Can’t she get a hint?” Leon groans. The black of his weapon shines like a beacon that irremediably attracts the creature’s eyes. It knows. It recognizes its downfall.

“She’s the punisher.” Ada says softly. “The Angry. She won’t give up until she’s dead.” And she raises her crossbow, aligns it with her eye. “Neither will we.”

Leon gives a sharp nod.

Their arms touch when they fire.

“I told you not to follow me!”

“You said you were going somewhere and I couldn’t follow!”

“You’re a special agent, Leon, you should recognize an order when you are being given one.”

“I’m not a goddamn soldier.” And he takes cover behind a car, shooting between Ada’s legs as she runs up the hood.

“Indeed; you’re a knight in shiny armor -” she says, cartwheeling out of the creature’s reach, “That doesn’t make me the bride in need of rescue.”

“Are we seriously going to describe one another until at least one gets their throat slit?”

“Want me to answer that with another question?”

“No!” he shouts angrily, ducking and sweeping the thing’s legs as the Woman distracts it.

“Then, no!” she replies, and on that she jumps on the Erinye, smacking what’s left of its jaw with her closed fist.

Leon tackles her out of the way before the whips can get to her. “We have to get its weakness.”

“We already got her hearing.”

“Okay, then we have to find its other weakness.”

She thinks for a bit, in cover behind a rusty public bin. “Let’s dismember it.”

“With what?!”

Something propels Leon back to the building. The Woman watches him fly. He collides with the exit doors, disappearing inside with a car tyre on his stomach and a short yelp of surprise.

She avoids a whip that would’ve cut her thigh and fires an arrow into the Erinye’s already weak knee.

“Leon!”

The Erinye spins around, fueled by insanity, and the fist closes around her throat. She gargles, fingers scraping at the Beretta under her armpit, but it’s stuck and the pressure makes her eye bulge out, drowning with tears and staring into the bloody ones of the Fury. Boiling with the passion for punishment.

The Woman claws at the hand, vainly…

 _SKKKKRRAA_!

She’s dropped to the ground unceremoniously, clutching at her bruised neck - at least it hadn’t been Leon this time..

Her knight is curled around the Erinye, legs around its back and one hand squeezing at its larynx in a wrestling move; while he works with his combat knife, steaming gore hitting him square in the face as he cuts and cuts and cuts the wing off at the very bone. It makes a satisfying, stomach-lurching noise and he keeps cutting through the Erinye’s trashing and tragic hissing.

“Leon, the whips!” she yells in alarm.

His incredible instincts react in time, and he releases his grip just as the Woman launches herself, two daggers sticking out of her fists. She stabs them at the clavicle, effectively pinning down the creature just as Leon evades another attempt at punishing him and starts slashing through the whips.

 _THWACK_ and _THWACK_ and _THWACK_ and it cries again, weeping blood from everywhere. Leon steps aside from the body, victoriously brandishing the remnants of the fleshy whips.

The Woman takes another arrow, one last, from her quiver. It impales the Erinye’s brain.

Killing it instantly.

“Gotcha, you dumb shit.” Leon says.

He turns around and she finds him searching for her eyes in dazed and dizzy triumph, covered in blood that isn’t his and that is his. He grins almost joyfully. Something stirs up in her stomach.

“I don’t think we can go on any further.” she says.

He lets out a breath through his nose, quick and labored. She fends off the distance separating them - merely three feet - and he throws the bloodied tails away. He wordlessly lifts his hands to her face.

And then their lips meet. He can’t hear anything, not even the little moan of surprise she makes. The ringing of his ears overpower every other noise, every thought he could have that would force him away. Five years. Five years of not kissing her, and he thinks he could pass out with the want.

It’s wet. It’s sloppy and red, but that’s because of the blood. He taints her with it, his bruised, callous fingers clutching at her back now, feeling the trenches of her wounds. Her hands have started to roam at his skull, deep inside his hair, tugging. Leon lowly whimpers in her mouth, shamelessly. She’s opened it, wide, swallowing his tongue while her nails trace down his neck and tear another cry from his throat.

A tug at his belt. Leon jolts. Her breasts are crushed against his torso, and their feet tangle. He rams her into the hood of the car next to the corpse of the Erinye.

She dips her head into his shoulder to breathe.

“Oh,” she says, “ _oh.”_

His left hand shoots up. It lifts her chin back up. Her last word chokes in his mouth. Of course he knows that’s the way she dislikes it; forceful and greedy, in which she never has control. She doesn’t stop him. She swipes the gore from his face, one hand snaking down to his crotch, tugging him between her legs.

There’s no tomorrow. There’s no yesterday either. The battles that have been fought bear no victims, and the wars, no winner. There was a beginning and there was an end, and what was in between doesn't matter anymore because this is the apogee, a climax in the form of a kiss and her shaking hand on his zip. There’s no winner, but one’s got to go on their knees anyway. Leon could easily bend her back on the hood of the car and smother his face underneath her skirt. She could turn the tables any minute, force his hips still and take him in her mouth.

Leon and Ada both lost, at this very moment. Ada broke the promise she made to herself, never to give in to his light or she could lure him into the darkness… Leon failed, and lied, when he said he was mad, when he said he’d never trust her again, when he said they were done for.

 _Give her hell_ , Claire had said.

Claire has no idea.

Leon breaks away from her. Ada blinks up to the sun behind his head. They pant.

“Are you guys done?”

Instinctively, he goes in front of Ada, stretching an arm to keep her hidden. It’s a woman. She’s at the entrance of the parking lot, torso strapped with a tactical vest, hand clad around an assault shotgun at her middle. She’s looking at them with a pinch of sadness in her eyes.

Ada breathes out. So that’s who she saw earlier out in the street.

“Helena?” Leon says.

Helena Harper gives a small smile, slowly stepping to them.

“Hey.” she says.

Her voice is shaky. So is her smile - by the way, it doesn’t stay on for very long.

“I called you, maybe, fifty times. Had to know you were okay.”

He drops his arm, revealing Ada who curiously, carefully studies his ex-partner of infortune.

“I’m sorry.” he replies, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “I had to throw away my phone…”

“At least you’re okay. Both of you.”

Helena’s downcast gaze meets Ada’s. She holds it for a moment. Leon can tell that there is a battle going on - not between the two women, but within the agent herself.

Then she looks up. He remembers this face for having seen it many times, as she’d straddled Simmons and slammed her fist with black knuckles onto the monster’s face. _Crack. Crack._ The sound had split the air and Simmon’s head had whipped to the opposite shoulder; blood spraying on Helena’s face like rose petals in the spring. No expression. Just pure determination.

Helena nods. “I’ll stall them.”

“Helena-”

“There’s a bounty on your head, and the president put it there. You gotta run, Leon.”

“The president-”

“I don’t know. I still don’t understand. But I can’t leave the Secret Services.” He opens his mouth to argue again - she cuts him off. “Please. Let me do this, let me _help_.”

Ada’s hand is on his bicep. He turns his head to her. They’re so close, their noses could bump if he inched in just a little more.

Is he really going to risk a friend’s life over Ada’s? Is there even a ‘choose’ option, is it really jumping off a rooftop and abandon his partner in the flames of a crumbling skyscraper to hold the lifeless body of his love? Or could he have protected both without rejecting one like the selfish prick he is?

He fights for the ones that can’t fight for themselves - that’s the main reason of his enrollment in the police force. And then had come Ada, and with her, the discovery of his personal need. His life is helping others, his life is his job. And suddenly, there’s just this incredibly egotistical need to quit everything and go with her.

Leon swallows hard.

“Thank you.”

Helena shakes her hand dismissively.

“C’mon. Get out of here. My team’s gonna check on me soon.”

“Helena… I owe you for this.”

“You would do the same for your partner. Now go.”

Ada’s hand slips down, down to fall into the small of his palm. She tugs him, gently, but hurriedly. He gives it a squeeze.

 

* * *

 

The USSS and DSO teams arrive shortly after. They find their team leader knelt over the corpse of a B.O.W, and no trace of the suspects in sight. Agent Harper rises. She kicks at the leg with her boot.

“It’s dead.” she says. “But there’s bioweapons involved now, meaning it's out of our league. Call the BSAA.”


	10. Two Strangers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updating now even though this chapter was supposed to be much longer because I'm hoping to get inspiration through your comments <3 I appreciate all those you guys left on the previous chapters, all of them made me tear up.
> 
> I thank you so much for loving this story, but I also need to thank whatsarasays for her amazing advices on this chapter. She's an amazing writer with killer metaphors and images, PLEASE check out her AO3.

Leon wedges Claire’s bike, swinging the keys to its owner. She locks her jaw to the blood splattered on Leon’s face.

“It’s not ours,” Leon says. Ada’s hands around his waist were warm during the ride. Now all they do is burn him alive. “No one followed us.”

“What about the bioweapon?”

“Dead,” Ada says. She tugs Leon to the door. 

He follows closely, mechanically, turning his back to Claire, who gasps, “And  _ that _ is not your blood?” 

Leon winces. 

“What happened out there? You went radio silence for a while.”

“I never said that it wanted to die,” Ada says. She has this familiar annoyed face on, the exact same one she wore the first couple times she saved him from certain death.

_ “Saving your ass — that’s twice.” _

_ “I didn’t realize you were keeping score.” _

Claire folds her arms under her chest. Great. Now Leon’s got two annoyed women to handle.

“Where’s Sherry?” he asks as a diversion. It works.

“In town,” Claire replies. He smiles at the proud glow in her eyes. “She went to see if there was anything she could do to improve the situation. She dragged Jake with her.”

“You told her to-”

“Stay safe, yes, I did. They’re grown, Leon. They’ve got each other’s backs.” She crosses her arms again, “Now I’ve got yours.”

Leon rolls his eyes. Although, he can’t help but feel the blossoming, warm feeling that is knowing that one is on the same plane of existence as Claire Redfield, “I’m grown.”

“You’ve been  _ flogged _ , for Christsake. You gotta get patched up.” 

Ada has looked away. She massages her shoulder, a crease between her brows indicating her pain. 

Claire nudges her, “Hey. Even you, Ada. God, you guys look awful.”

Leon doesn’t miss the surprised smile on Ada’s face.

Claire takes them to the bathroom — actually,  _ pushes  _ them to the bathroom to be more precise. Leon feels mothered. He isn’t complaining, it’s actually a nice change of pace. He hasn’t been taken care of in years (and he doesn’t even want to begin on the last time he got laid).

Now he sounds desperate.

“I got some antiseptics,” Claire says, stretching to get the first aid kit above the cupboard, “Here. I’ll look for the gauze. Stay put.”

Ada sits on the toilet. The crease between her brows deepens as she moves to slide the straps of her dress down her arms. Slow movements. A small grunt. Leon crouches at her feet.

“Need any help?”

It’s dangerous territory, kneeling before her when she’s already got the upper hand, further so affirming how beaten, how stricken he is. Then again, they’ve never been cowards, they’ve just always beaten around the bush when it came to talking. Because, who knows? The place might explode. One of them could fall.

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to take it off.”

He nods, keeping his face in order. She turns her back to him.

It’s not that bad, really. He’s seen worse injuries, mostly on dead folks. But it’s not that good either. All of the cuts are concentrated between her shoulder blades, racked along her mid-back. The B.O.W. had been precise. A skilled persecutor. Now, it’s dead, and they’re left to stick band-aids onto the crevasses.

He slides the dress off her chest and lets her kick the rest off with her feet. He helps her take her bra off. Leon looks elsewhere, to the right, to the mirror, where he stares back at the Woman whose reflection picks the dress up and neatly folds it on the sink, chest bare. It makes his eyes shift and his skin prickle with red. He’s reminded of that day in the woods, in the current where they’d washed their clothes. She had stolen his boxers and offered him a full view of her ass. She had looked like a painting. God, he really needs to remember its title.

Leon finds cotton wool in a drawer and purposely tries to divert the subject.

“Do you know what that thing was out there?”

Ada blows softly through the mouth as he presses the cotton ball onto her bruised, swollen back, “An Erinye. It’s nothing smarter than a Tyrant, really.” He waits for her to disclose more, but she keeps her teeth gritted as he gently pats the cuts with the cotton, “Ugh…”

“Sorry. Some are deep.”

She keeps quiet, head down. He knows she’s tense because she’s got her hands clawing at her thighs, and her shoulders are square, and her breath is locked like she’s got her finger on the trigger. Leon ruminates on the fact that Ada acts and reacts the same as she did twenty years ago. She hasn’t changed. She hasn’t grown. Her hair got longer, some strands have grayed; and if he squints hard, he can see the smallest of wrinkles at the corner of her eyes. Minor changes. Insignificant. In the end, she’s still committing herself to that impenetrable fortress of lies and secrets; still committing herself to turning her back on the world and closing off in herself.

Leon doesn’t want that for her. He doesn’t want that for them.

Because there’s definitely a “them” now. There’s been a “them” since she chose to kiss him and lead him on their team. There’s been a “them” since he saved her life and she saved his, since she left him a,  _ “See you around. At your hotel room. 10pm. Don’t be late.”  _ There’s been a “them” since he got down on his knees in front of her for the first time, since he went down on her for the first time.

And here they are. “Them,” again. She’s the only unchangeable thing of his past that he can’t let go of — so instead, he’s going to accompany her into change.

His breath brushes at her neck. It’s unnoticeable, but she turns her head to it.

“Do you remember this?” He asks, and a smile tugs at his lips. He wets a new cotton ball with the antiseptic, now taking care of her lower back, “Back in the sewers?”

He still can’t see her face. Somehow, he knows she’s smiling too. “Do I remember you fainting with a bullet lodged in the fat of your shoulder?  _ Ow. _ ”

“Almost done.”

She’s slowly breathing through the nose now. It’s the only noise in the room, so easy to focus on, “Of course I remember this. This, and the other times.”

He chuckles, “Are we still keeping score?”

Ada finally turns her head to him, giving him the pleasure of her cocky profile, “Yes. And, I’m winning.”

Leon clicks his tongue. “You’ve forgotten about the past week: bullet wound,” he reminds her. He’s not bold enough to tickle her side. Not yet, “and hospital.”

“That meet and greet with the windshield of the car really damaged your memory, Leon. No, we’re even.”

Claire comes in unexpectedly. She looks down at the two of them, Ada, bare-chested; Leon, instantly abashed. She holds out the large bandages of gauze in her hands while clearing her throat.

“You guys should take a shower first. Antiseptics don’t wash away the smell.”

Leon chuckles, “Understood.”

Claire pointedly stares at Leon on her way out. Sometimes she’s so perceptive it leaves Leon to wonder that she gets him because she’s his best friend, or because he’s such an open book, pages stained with ink and corners folded.

Is he too forgiving of Ada? Does she deserve his sympathy, does he realize that no matter how old and tired he gets, he can’t ever seem to learn?  _ “She very nearly broke your nose an hour ago, and now she’s tits out in front of you. Only God can figure out where your priorities stand, my good sir,”  _  must be what Claire thinks.

He watches Ada as she stands up and faces the mirror. She leans in, close to the glass, running dirty fingers under her eyes.

“I’m wondering-” Leon blurts out. Dangerous territory. The deed is done, and Ada is listening. “‘I’m wondering why you left.”

She turns on the faucet and splashes her face.

“Was it really because of the argument? Or were you using it as an excuse for some…other jobs I can’t know about.”

He doesn’t expect her to reply. But she’s going to, one way or another.

“I was…really mad at you. Beyond fucking pissed, because you never said anything, you never told me who shot you, who was after you, after us. I was left in the dark like a moron and you didn’t even try to pull me from it. But I  _ never _ ran. I never ran, Ada.” 

She’s standing very still now. She’s staring into her reflection, and it’s like she’s got the sunglasses on because he can’t see her eyes. They have no color, no shape. They’re foreign.

“What were you doing on that rooftop that couldn’t wait?”

Ada Wong is her own woman; he’s taken that in, he’s digested it, he’s accepted it. She goes wherever she pleases, sleeps whenever she wishes, eats whatever she chooses. But she doesn’t get to fuck up his life any more than it already is.

The Ada in the mirror meets his eyes. She gives a sad smile. It is short, and it is empty. He can’t have it be empty.

“Ada, I’m trying,” he begs, so honest, “I’m trying to be patient about this. We saw how being angry worked out — it didn’t. So, I’m welcoming you in. I’m just waiting for you to do the same.”

Her eyebrows are furrowed, now, and there’s a delicate, rare shine in her eyes like pity, like sadness, that her mouth copies.

“Oh, Leon…”

She turns to him. Leon instinctively sits on the toilet bowl.

“Take off your shirt.”

He gives her a blank stare. She crosses the void blocking their two bodies in one step. She slips a hand to separate his knees. Leon looks at her. He looks and he forgets. Ada is battered and perfect, with her hands lying atop his shoulders and her naked breasts so close to his face, he could easily lean in and rest his head on their plenitude. Drift off among the clouds.

Leon closes his eyes as the wet warmth of her lips presses a kiss on his forehead.

She hasn’t dried her face. The pearls of water drip down his neck. They’re cold and they tickle as they wet his collar. Ada’s hand comes at the back of his neck, brushing at the hair there. He needs a cut. The cut can wait. Because Ada’s dropping another kiss, this one right above his left eyebrow (he tries not to shiver). She kisses again, on his closed eye. His cheek receives extra privilege, and her fingers are now working at the buttons of his shirt, popping them open, one by one. His arms shoot up and he grabs her waist.

The well is filling up. He doesn’t even see the pitch black bottom and the pile of crushing rocks that lay; the water, warm from the downpour, is slurping at his feet, rising to his ankles. Soon, he will be able to swim up to the surface. Soon, he will be able to free himself from the weight of the world and become king of the clouds.

Her wet lips finally press against his. It’s long. It’s deep. Leon opens his mouth as he feels the insistence of her tongue. It pushes, and it licks, and it cleans, and she’s got her hands roaming on his abs, pushing his shirt away to touch the most skin possible.

Her knee brushes against his groin and Leon moans into her. He wanted her to answer his questions. He wanted some truth for once. Perhaps catch a breather. And here he is, out of breath, out of mind, lost in Ada’s kiss as she hungrily pushes him into the toilet tank.

_ She doesn’t get to have her own question answered when all she’s done is avoid his. _

All of a sudden Leon retracts, his fingers digging into Ada’s hips to push her away. It hurts, to lose her touch, to see that pained surprise in her eyes, when his entire being is devoted to finger her here until she cries out her release. It hurts. It feels like control.

“No.”

His voice is a snap. It breaks her further away from him. Her ass meets the washstand.

“We’re not done talking.”

“We’re not?” she asks, like stunned. Her lips are almost swollen. He can feel himself stirring to them —  _ don’t give in. _

“I told you, I’m welcoming you in,” he says. “But I’m not sleeping with you until you tell me the truth, Ada.”

She crosses her arms under her ample chest —  _ don’t give in. _

“Is that an ultimatum?”

“No, that’s a promise. I always keep them.”

Ada purses her lips.

“You’re filthy,” she comments as though he didn’t just pull her apart to stitch her right back together. “You should follow Claire Redfield’s advice and take a shower. I’ll wait for my turn.”

Leon swallows, hard. He brings his knees back together. Ada takes a towel and wraps it around her frame.

“I’ll be in the library.”

“Then we’ll talk,” he throws in, hoping she’ll catch the message.

Ada stops at the door, knob in hand.

“I’ll be in the library,” she repeats as she closes the door.

  
  


He scrubs at his skin until it’s blotchy red and clear of dirt and blood. He washes his hair scrupulously until he finds the strands blonde again. He finds Chris’ shaving cream after rummaging through Claire’s stuff. He doesn’t cut himself with the razor. That’s one less wound to bandage.

She played him like a rookie. She shut him off with a kiss, turned him on with a touch, and now he has to wash the desperation out of him. He wrings the want off like a wet rag. Coagulated ochre disappears down the drain.

The cold water helps. It splashes on his head and cools down the well, leaving him with teeth gritted and a frozen but decided heart. He has his virtue. It’s always been his greatest asset, the reason he keeps fighting. If he loses it somewhere along the way — stolen from the undying monsters or a malicious vixen…but that’s not going to happen. They, Ada and Leon, together, will be the absolution of humanity. Whether she likes it or not.

Leon finds her in the library. She’s still wrapped in that white towel, legs crossed on the armrest of a sofa. She’s got a book open on one hand. A black phone disappears from her other.

“What’s that?” He inquires. She shows him the cover. Huh.  _ Les Fleurs du Mal _ , once more. “You know French?”

“Do you want me to read to you?”

The heat is coming back. He thought it had been drained by the shower — how gullible. He fights it. Ada reads out loud without waiting for his answer:

“Viens, mon beau chat, sur mon coeur amoureux / Retiens les griffes de ta patte / Et laisse-moi plonger dans tes beaux yeux / Mêlés de métal et d'agate.”

Leon sighs, “You know I don’t get any of that.”

“Isn’t it more fun that way?”

His eyes darken. His hands ball into fists, “No, Ada. It’s not fun, not to me.”

She looks at him and closes the book.

“My turn?” she asks, walking up to replace the poetry collection in its shelf.

Leon stands before the door.

“No,” he says.

She pauses.

“Did you take all the hot water?”

“You gotta promise first.”

“Promise not to take all the hot water?”

“Ada.”

She pauses again, then she lets out a sigh of defeat.

“Let me through, Leon.”

“Not before you promise.”

“Promise what?”

“Promise not to fuck us over.”

She sighs again, “I promise.” 

He shakes his head. 

She pleads, “Trust me?”

“I really don’t know, Ada.”

“What do I have to do to make you believe me?”

He shrugs, “Let’s go out.”

She scoffs. The idea is absurd. “You mean, on a date?”

“Yeah. See if it works out. Because the way I see it, you’ve got two options: you tell the truth — all of the truth, no lies, no mind games — and we face together this new bad guy, and we defeat it, once and for all. Or, you get the fuck out of my life.”

“I won’t do that.”

“Which one?”

“I can’t do that.”

“It’s up to you. It’s always been up to you, Ada. I’m the one that has to wait for you to allow me to see even a glimpse of you — all you have to do is set the time and the place. The longest I had to wait was six years. _Six_ _years_.”

“I had restraints.”

“And I thought you were dead.”

“You just named the restraint.”

“Death is not a restraint to you. You get back up, you blow a kiss to the sky, and you fly away. Sometimes you leave a note. Today, you left with a punch.” he adds, more violently. She holds in a tight grip the towel around her. So he cools down, slowly, catching his breath, “I’m not asking this because I like it, I’m asking it because it needs to be done. I…” He licks his lips and he looks at her dead in the eye, “I’ve been in love with you for a while. And given how you kiss me, I think you have, too. I don’t wanna believe you’re only staying to play me. I want to give you some sort of redemption through my eyes.”

She’s moving. She’s walking to him, steadily, and Leon straightens, ready to fight another forceful kiss. One that doesn’t come.

“Alright. I’m going to take a shower.” She’s imperturbable. The way she clutches the towel says otherwise. “Then we can go out. Tonight.”

She moves past him in a sway of the hips — he takes her forearm and kisses her, swiftly, as a reward, softly, on his own terms. When he breaks away, he knows that he’s got her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“I know.”

“I’ll make it up.”

He smiles. It’s warm. “I know.”

* * *

 

**_The Cat, by Charles Baudelaire, in Les Fleurs du Mal (trans: Roy Campbell)_ **

_ Come, my fine cat, against my loving heart; _

_ Sheathe your sharp claws, and settle. _

_ And let my eyes into your pupils dart _

_ Where agate sparks with metal. _

_ Now while my fingertips caress at leisure _

_ Your head and wiry curves, _

_ And that my hand's elated with the pleasure _

_ Of your electric nerves, _

_ I think about my woman — how her glances _

_ Like yours, dear beast, deep-down _

_ And cold, can cut and wound one as with lances; _

_ Then, too, she has that vagrant _

_ And subtle air of danger that makes fragrant _

_ Her body, lithe and brown. _


End file.
